Superconductivity device comprising a phononic crystal
| DWPI Title: Superconducting device comprises two-dimensional phononic crystal comprising periodic array of holes or plugs in superconducting matrix material, where holes or plug material provide acoustic impedance mismatch with matrix material, and matrix material has superconducting transition temperature |
| Abstract: The invention is directed to a device and method to engineer the superconducting transition width by suppressing the phonon populations responsible for the Cooper-pair decoherence below the superconducting transition temperature via phononic bandgap engineering. The device uses phononic crystals to engineer a phononic frequency gap that suppresses the decohering thermal phonon population just below the Cooper-frequency, and thus the normal conduction electron population. For example, such engineering can relax the cooling requirements for a variety of circuits yielding higher operational quality factors for superconducting electronics and interconnects. |
| Use: Superconducting device. |
| Advantage: The device has enabled higher quality factors for superconducting resonators, transmission lines, and detectors, potentially enhancing the sensitivity and reducing the dead-time of transition-edge single-photon detectors, has reduced or eliminated the transition tail, it can be possible to operate closer to Tc, hence relaxing the cooling requirements, has a high sound velocity and has provided a strong acoustic impedance mismatch with the lighter Al matrix. |
| Novelty: Superconducting device comprises a two-dimensional phononic crystal comprising a periodic array of holes or plugs in a superconducting matrix material, where the holes or plug material provide an acoustic impedance mismatch with the matrix material, the matrix material has a superconducting transition temperature Tc , and the phononic crystal has a phononic bandgap at a frequency that suppresses a decohering thermal phonon population just below the Cooper-frequency of the matrix material, and suppressing the normal conduction electron population near Tc , and narrowing the width of the superconducting transition. |
| Filed: 3/6/2019 |
| Application Number: US16294011A |
| Tech ID: SD 13949.1 |
| This invention was made with Government support under Contract No. DE-NA0003525 awarded by the United States Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration. The Government has certain rights in the invention. |
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