Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors on aluminum nitride photonic integrated circuits

With recent advances in integrated single-photon sources and quantum memories, onchip integration of high-performance single-photon detectors becomes increasingly important. The superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD) is the leading single-photon counting technology for quantum information processing. Among various waveguide materials, aluminum nitride (AlN) is a promising candidate because of its exceptionally wide bandgap, and intrinsic piezoelectric and electro-optic properties. In this Master's thesis, we developed a complete fabrication process for making high-performance niobium nitride SNSPDs on AlN, and demonstrated their integration with AlN photonic waveguides. The detectors fabricated on this new substrate material have demonstrated saturated detection efficiency from visible to near-IR, sub-60-ps timing jitter, and ~6 ns reset time. This work will contribute towards building a fully integrated quantum photonic processor.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Zhu, Di, Ph. D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Karl K. Berggren.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/108974

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/108974