T. Fujimori

Present performance of a single pixel Ti/Au bilayer TES calorimeter

We are developing a superconducting transition-edge sensor (TES) calorimeter for future Japanese X-ray astronomy missions (e.g. NeXT mission). The performance of our single pixel TES calorimeter is presented. We fabricated a Ti/Au (40 nm/110 nm) bilayer TES on a thin silicon-nitride membrane, which is adjusted to have a transition temperature of about 100 mK. The size of the TES is 500μm × 500μm, and 300μm × 300μm gold with a thickness of 300 nm is deposited with sputtering as an X-ray absorber. The TES calorimeter was installed in a dilution refrigerator operated at about 40 mK, with a combination of 400-series SQUID array as an ammeter. Collimated 5.9 keV X-rays (200 um in diameter) from 55Fe isotope were irradiated and X-ray pulses were obtained. Simultaneously with a fast falling time constant of 74.2 us, the energy resolution of 6.6+-0.4 eV was attained, while the baseline noise was 6.4 eV. The contents of the energy resolution are 5.1 eV of the excess noise, 3.3 eV of the readout noise, 1.6 eV of the pulse by pulse variation, and 1.9 eV of the intrinsic noise. The baseline noise are dominated by an unknown excess noise, which increases roughly in proportion to the inverse of the TES resistance. The pulse height is sensitive to the operating conditions, and the superconducting shield appears to have improved it by a factor of about 2. The calorimeter works fine over six months surviving five thermal cycles, even though it is kept in air.

High sensitive X-ray microcalorimeter using Bi-Au microabsorber for imaging applications

An X-ray microcalorimeter is a cryogenic energy-dispersive spectrometer, which has an energy resolution almost comparable to that of conventional wavelength-dispersive spectrometers. Using a transition edge sensor (TES) as a temperature sensor, the energy resolution can be further improved. We have developed a new method of achieving an array of TES microcalorimeters for the purpose of X-ray imaging. To achieve this, mushroom-shaped X-ray microabsorbers formed using electrodeposition were applied. The temperature of the TES, which is easily degraded by thermal diffusion, was kept sufficiently low throughout the process to achieve practical use. On the bases of this new method, a 2×2 (× 4) array of TES microcalorimeters was fabricated and tested. A high energy resolution of 13.0 eV at 6 keV was achieved and the filling factor was improved to 83%. Although several issues still need to be investigated, we verified that our method is useful for fabricating a Ti–Au TES microcalorimeter array.

Multipixel readout of TES calorimeters

We are developing a superconducting Transition-Edge Sensor (TES) calorimeter array. We adopt calorimeter multiplex in frequency domain to read signals from the calorimeter array with a small number of front-end electronics and wirings. We further utilize Calorimeter Bridge Biased by an AC Generator (CABBAGE) approach to eliminate the AC carrier in the output. We tested the method using a TES calorimeter, which has a transition temperature of 390 mK. Because of the high operating temperature, energy resolution of the calorimeter is limited to 200 eV at 5.9 keV even when it is biased with a DC current. We operated the calorimeter in CABBAGE circuit with 30 kHz sinusoidal bias and obtained an energy resolution of 250 eV. We found that there remains a small-amplitude residual in the output even at the bridge balance point. The residual contains not only 30 kHz component but also odd-order harmonics. We consider that this is due to the variation of the TES resistance with bias current. The 50 eV degradation of the energy resolution from DC to AC biases can be explained by the fact that some of signal power is carried in the odd-order harmonics, which we did not utilize in the data reduction process. We also succeeded to operate the CABBAGE by 100 kHz, although the energy resolution was degraded to 380 eV probably due to low response of the signal readout circuit at the frequency.

A via hole based superconducting wiring method for enhanced X-ray image sensors

In this paper we developed through-wafer interconnections using only a simple fabrication process. The interconnection was successfully transformed into the superconducting state. A current density of 13 cm/sup 2//mA was obtained in the superconducting state. We realize high energy-resolution X-ray imaging using the superconducting through-wafer interconnections.