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Graphene-based Josephson junction microwave bolometer

Nature volume 586, pages 42–46 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Sensitive microwave detectors are essential in radioastronomy1, dark-matter axion searches2 and superconducting quantum information science3,4. The conventional strategy to obtain higher-sensitivity bolometry is the nanofabrication of ever smaller devices to augment the thermal response5,6,7. However, it is difficult to obtain efficient photon coupling and to maintain the material properties in a device with a large surface-to-volume ratio owing to surface contamination. Here we present an ultimately thin bolometric sensor based on monolayer graphene. To utilize the minute electronic specific heat and thermal conductivity of graphene, we develop a superconductor–graphene–superconductor Josephson junction8,9,10,11,12,13 bolometer embedded in a microwave resonator with a resonance frequency of 7.9 gigahertz and over 99 per cent coupling efficiency. The dependence of the Josephson switching current on the operating temperature, charge density, input power and frequency shows a noise-equivalent power of 7 × 10−19 watts per square-root hertz, which corresponds to an energy resolution of a single 32-gigahertz photon14, reaching the fundamental limit imposed by intrinsic thermal fluctuations at 0.19 kelvin. Our results establish that two-dimensional materials could enable the development of bolometers with the highest sensitivity allowed by the laws of thermodynamics.

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Fig. 1: Graphene-based Josephson junction microwave bolometer.
Fig. 2: Characterization of the GJJ switching current.
Fig. 3: Operation of the device as a bolometer and measurement of the detector efficiency.
Fig. 4: Sensitivity and fundamental fluctuation limit of the bolometer.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge discussions with L. Levitov, M.-H. Nguyen and W. Kalfus. We thank H.-J. Lee for fabrication facility support for some of the devices. W.J. and G.-H.L. acknowledge support from the Samsung Science and Technology Foundation under Project Number SSTFBA1702-05. D.K.E. acknowledges support from the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain through the “Severo Ochoa” programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D (SE5-0522), Fundació Privada Cellex, Fundació Privada Mir-Puig, Generalitat de Catalunya through the CERCA programme, the H2020 Programme under grant agreement 820378 (project 2D⋅SIPC) and the La Caixa Foundation. The work of E.D.W. and D.E. was supported in part by the Army Research Laboratory Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies programme W911NF-18-2-0048 and the US Army Research Laboratory (award W911NF-17-1-0435). K.W. and T.T. acknowledge support from the Elemental Strategy Initiative conducted by MEXT, Japan, grant number JPMXP0112101001, JSPS KAKENHI grant number JP20H00354 and CREST(JPMJCR15F3), JST. The work of P.K. and K.C.F. was supported by the US Army Research Office under Cooperative Agreement number W911NF-17-1-0574.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Gil-Ho Lee & Philip Kim

  2. Department of Physics, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, Republic of Korea

    Gil-Ho Lee & Woochan Jung

  3. ICFO-Institut de Ciències Fotòniques, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Barcelona, Spain

    Dmitri K. Efetov

  4. Quantum Engineering and Computing Group, Raytheon BBN Technologies, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Leonardo Ranzani, Thomas A. Ohki & Kin Chung Fong

  5. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Evan D. Walsh

  6. School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Evan D. Walsh & Dirk Englund

  7. International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan

    Takashi Taniguchi

  8. Research Center for Functional Materials, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan

    Kenji Watanabe

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Contributions

G.-H.L., T.A.O., D.E. and K.C.F. conceived the project. L.R., G.-H.L. and W.J. designed and fabricated the samples. T.T. and K.W. provided the hBN crystal. G.-H.L., E.D.W. and K.C.F. performed the measurements. G.-H.L., D.K.E., L.R., E.D.W., T.A.O., P.K., D.E. and K.C.F. performed the data analysis and wrote the paper. P.K., D.E. and K.C.F. supervised the project.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kin Chung Fong.

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Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Fig. 1 Loaded Q factor of input resonator.

Fitting of the loaded quality factor of the microwave resonator. Shown is the phase of the S11 scattering parameter of the half-wave microwave resonator at two different gate voltages. Data from the same dataset as in Fig. 3a.

Extended Data Fig. 2 GJJ bolometer input resonator.

a, b, Suppression of the switching current at the resonance frequency of the input resonator for Device H (a) and Device T (b) with test power of −15 dBm applied outside the cryostat at 0.3 K (a) and 0.2 K (b). See Extended Data Table 1 for the dimensions and measured parameters of the devices.

Extended Data Fig. 3 GJJ switching current.

a, b, Average switching current of the Josephson junction for Device H (a) and Device T (b).

Extended Data Fig. 4 Electron cooling.

a, b, Interpolated graphene electron temperature versus input power for Device H with a carrier density of ~0.72 × 1012 cm−2 (a) and Device T with a carrier density of ~3.2 × 1012 cm−2 (b). The lines are fits using the electron–phonon heat transfer theory.

Extended Data Table 1 Sensitivity and thermal properties of the GJJ bolometer
Full size table
Extended Data Table 2 GJJ properties
Full size table

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Lee, GH., Efetov, D.K., Jung, W. et al. Graphene-based Josephson junction microwave bolometer. Nature 586, 42–46 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2752-4

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