Superconducting Nanowire Logic

Signal amplification, Logic circuits  

Researchers

Adam McCaughan / Karl Berggren

Departments: Dept of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
Technology Areas: Electronics & Photonics: Semiconductors / Industrial Engineering & Automation: Manufacturing & Equipment
Impact Areas: Connected World

  • superconducting three-terminal device and logic gates
    United States of America | Granted | 9,509,315
  • superconducting three-terminal device and logic gates
    United States of America | Granted | 10,171,086

Technology

The proposed technology is a three terminal device that can be used for amplification and basic logical operations. The device is constructed from superconducting nanowires with a small gate size, low thermal dissipation, and easy fabrication. Each device can be fabricated out of a single layer thing film superconductor using conventional e-beam lithography. The superconducting nanowires allow for cryogenic applications of the technology.   

Problem Addressed   

Signal processing is used in almost all cryogenic experiments which generate electrical signals, often with very low amplitudes. Typically, this electrical processing must occur at room temperature unless systems such as rapid single flux quantum (RSFQ) are used, as very few options are available to the researcher who wants to perform processing such as amplification on signals at temperatures below 10K. However, implementing RFSQ logic requires precision growth of Josephson Junctions and complex circuit designs.  

Advantages

  • Low thermal dissipation
  • Small gate size
  • Easy to fabricate nanowires  

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