Department | Measurements of Electric properties and Noise in Innovative Materials and Superconductive Devices

The Laboratory is active in two main research areas

The first area is the development of innovative superconductive devices, and in particular devices based on nanostrips. Such systems have demonstrated great capability as single photon detectors down to the IR region of the spectrum and are also the core of new three terminal superconductive devices capable of signal discrimination and amplification.

Applications of such superconducting nanostrip devices are:

- Fast optical interfaces (up to 10 Gbps ) for superconducting digital circuits;

- Receivers sensitive to individual photons in the band of 1550 nm for applications in quantum optics and secure telecommunications (quantum key distribution);

- Optical circuits for Interfacing quantum computing as a technique of control and manipulation of the Qubits having a low effect of decoherence;

- Time-resolved infrared spectroscopy;

- Infrared Astronomy

- Macromolecule mass spectroscopy .

The second area is the investigation of transport properties of advanced materials and devices through noise spectroscopy. The investigated systems comprise:

-high Tc superconductors,

-manganites,

-2D electron gas interfaces,

-metals,

-carbon nanotube composites,

-solar cells (crystalline, polymeric, perovskites).

-green electronics materials

The spectral analysis of low frequency noise ( noise spectroscopy ) is a powerful tool to study the properties of these materials, as it highlights the sources of intrinsic fluctuation of the transport properties, allowing to shed light on the basic mechanisms at work and also to set the ultimate limits of achievable performance of devices made from such materials.

The available equipment comprises:

Closed cycle low temperature noise test station (10 to 300 K)

Closed cycle low temperature electro-optical test station (3 to 300 K)

Continuous flow optical cryostat (3 to 300 K)

Test camera for room temperature electronics (-40 to 120 °C)

Microwave generators 0-20 GHz

Spectrum Analyzers (0-100 kHz, 0-3 GHz and 0-20 GHz)

Wire bonder

Pulsed Laser optical sources from IR to UV

100 fs Laser source at 1550 nm

THz station