Superconducting Tunnel Junction Detectors for Analytical Sciences

Author

Ohkubo, Masataka ; Shigetomo, Shiki ; Ukibe, Masahiro ; Fujii, G. ; Matsubayashi, Nobuyuki

Author_Institution

Tsukuba Innovation Arena Headquarter (TIA), Nat. Inst. of Adv. Ind. Sci. & Technol. (AIST), Tsukuba, Japan

Volume

24

Issue

4

fYear

2014

fDate

Aug. 2014

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

8

Abstract

Superconducting tunnel junction (STJ) detectors exhibit superior detection performance for photons and particles at a high spectroscopic resolution of ~ 10 eV, a short dead-time (decay time) of ~ μs, a high quantum efficiency of ~ 100%, and a low detection threshold energy of less than 1 eV, which cannot be achieved by conventional detectors. The outstanding detection performance originates from a small superconducting energy gap of ~ meV, which is three orders of magnitude smaller than ~ eV in semiconductors. This paper reports our recent progress in two applications of STJ detectors to fluorescence-yield X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) spectrometry for trace light elements in matrices and mass spectrometry (MS) for ions with the same mass/charge-number ratio (m/z) but different charge states and neutral fragments.

Keywords

EXAFS; mass spectroscopy; superconducting energy gap; superconducting junction devices; superconducting photodetectors; XAFS; charge states; detection performance; detection threshold energy; fluorescence-yield X-ray absorption fine structure; mass spectrometry; quantum efficiency; spectroscopic resolution; superconducting energy gap; superconducting tunnel junction detectors; Detectors; Energy resolution; Josephson junctions; Junctions; Niobium; Photonics; Tunneling; Mass spectroscopy (MS); X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS); X-ray detection; superconducting devices; superconducting tunnel junction (STJ);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Applied Superconductivity, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1051-8223

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TASC.2014.2318316

Filename

6803065