Micro-refrigerators that operate in the sub-kelvin regime are a key device in quantum technology. A well-studied candidate, an electronic cooler using Normal metal - Insulator - Superconductor (NIS) tunnel junctions offers substantial performance and
power. However, its superconducting electrodes are severely overheated due to exponential suppression of their thermal conductance towards low temperatures, and the cooler performs unsatisfactorily - especially in powerful devices needed for practical applications. We employ a second NIS cooling stage to thermalize the hot superconductor at the backside of the main NIS cooler. Not only providing a lower bath temperature, the second stage cooler actively evacuates quasiparticles out of the hot superconductor, especially in the low temperature limit. The NIS cooler approaches its ideal theoretical expectations without compromising cooling power. This cascade design can also be employed to manage excess heat in other cryo-electronic devices.
We demonstrate experimentally a precise realization of Coulomb Blockade Thermometry (CBT) working at temperatures up to 60 K. Advances in nano fabrication methods using electron beam lithography allow us to fabricate a uniform arrays of sufficiently
small tunnel junctions to guarantee an overall temperature reading uncertainty of about 1%
Nowadays superconductors serve in numerous applications, from high-field magnets to ultra-sensitive detectors of radiation. Mesoscopic superconducting devices, i.e. those with nanoscale dimensions, are in a special position as they are easily driven
out of equilibrium under typical operating conditions. The out-of-equilibrium superconductors are characterized by non-equilibrium quasiparticles. These extra excitations can compromise the performance of mesoscopic devices by introducing, e.g., leakage currents or decreased coherence times in quantum devices. By applying an external magnetic field, one can conveniently suppress or redistribute the population of excess quasiparticles. In this article we present an experimental demonstration and a theoretical analysis of such effective control of quasiparticles, resulting in electron cooling both in the Meissner and vortex states of a mesoscopic superconductor. We introduce a theoretical model of quasiparticle dynamics which is in quantitative agreement with the experimental data.
In electronic cooling with superconducting tunnel junctions, the cooling power is counterbalanced by the interaction with phonons and by the heat flow from the overheated leads. We study aluminium-based coolers that are equipped with a suspended norm
al metal and an efficient quasi-particle drain. At intermediate temperatures, the phonon bath of the suspended normal metal is cooled. At lower temperatures, by adjusting the junction transparency, we control the injection current, and thus the superconductor temperature. The device shows a strong cooling from 150 mK down to about 30 mK, a factor of five in temperature. We suggest that spatial non-uniformity in the superconductor gap limits the cooling toward lower temperatures.
We investigate Coulomb blockade thermometers (CBT) in an intermediate temperature regime, where measurements with enhanced accuracy are possible due to the increased magnitude of the differential conductance dip. Previous theoretical results show tha
t corrections to the half width and to the depth of the measured conductance dip of a sensor are needed, when leaving the regime of weak Coulomb blockade towards lower temperatures. In the present work, we demonstrate experimentally that the temperature range of a CBT sensor can be extended by employing these corrections without compromising the primary nature or the accuracy of the thermometer.
A small magnetic field is found to enhance relaxation processes in a superconductor thus stabilizing superconductivity in non-equilibrium conditions. In a normal-metal (N) - insulator - superconductor (S) tunnel junction, applying a field of the orde
r of 100 mu T leads to significantly improved cooling of the N island by quasiparticle (QP) tunneling. These findings are attributed to faster QP relaxation within the S electrodes as a result of enhanced QP drain through regions with locally suppressed energy gap due to magnetic vortices in the S leads at some distance from the junction.
We investigate a wafer scale tunnel junction fabrication method, where a plasma etched via through a dielectric layer covering bottom Al electrode defines the tunnel junction area. The ex-situ tunnel barrier is formed by oxidation of the bottom elect
rode in the junction area. Room temperature resistance mapping over a 150 mm wafer give local deviation values of the tunnel junction resistance that fall below 7.5 % with an average of 1.3 %. The deviation is further investigated by sub-1 K measurements of a device, which has one tunnel junction connected to four arrays consisting of N junctions (N = 41, junction diameter 700 nm). The differential conductance is measured in single-junction and array Coulomb blockade thermometer operation modes. By fitting the experimental data to the theoretical models we found an upper limit for the local tunnel junction resistance deviation of ~5 % for the array of 2N+1 junctions. This value is of the same order as the minimum detectable deviation defined by the accuracy of our experimental setup.
We study heat transport in hybrid normal metal - superconductor - normal metal (NSN) structures. We find the thermal conductance of a short superconducting wire to be strongly enhanced beyond the BCS value due to inverse proximity effect. The measure
ments agree with a model based on the quasiclassical theory of superconductivity in the diffusive limit. We determine a crossover temperature below which quasiparticle heat conduction dominates over the electron-phonon relaxation.
A proximity-effect thermometer measures the temperature dependent critical supercurrent in a long superconductor - normal metal - superconductor (SNS) Josephson junction. Typically, the transition from the superconducting to the normal state is detec
ted by monitoring the appearance of a voltage across the junction. We describe a new approach to detect the transition based on the temperature increase in the resistive state due to Joule heating. Our method increases the sensitivity and is especially applicable for temperatures below about 300 mK.
We demonstrate electronic cooling of a suspended AuPd island using superconductor-insulator-normal metal tunnel junctions. This was achieved by developing a simple fabrication method for reliably releasing narrow submicron sized metal beams. The proc
ess is based on reactive ion etching and uses a conducting substrate to avoid charge-up damage and is compatible with e.g. conventional e-beam lithography, shadow-angle metal deposition and oxide tunnel junctions. The devices function well and exhibit clear cooling; up to factor of two at sub-kelvin temperatures.
