High-quality ultra-thin films of niobium nitride (NbN) are developed by plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD) technique. Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) patterned from this material exhibit high switching currents and saturated internal efficiencies over a broad bias range at 1550 nm telecommunication wavelength. Statistical analyses on hundreds of fabricated devices show near-unity throughput yield due to exceptional homogeneity of the films. The ALD-NbN material represents an ideal superconducting material for fabricating large single-photon detector arrays combining high efficiency, low jitter, low dark counts.
@article{arxiv.1910.07010,
title = {Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors fabricated from atomic-layer-deposited NbN},
author = {Risheng Cheng and Sihao Wang and Hong X. Tang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.07010},
year = {2020}
}