Title: NIST Develops Thermal Impedance Amplifier for Superconducting Electronics
NIST has invented a new superconducting circuit element called a thermal impedance amplifier. This device amplifies low-voltage superconducting signals into higher-voltage signals that are compatible with semiconductor electronics. The amplifier consists of a resistive layer and a switch layer, with a thermal conductor between them.
The thermal impedance amplifier addresses a major challenge in superconducting electronics: the difficulty of driving conventional room temperature electronics and optoelectronics with the small voltages produced by superconducting devices. By amplifying these low-voltage signals, the amplifier enables more efficient communication between superconducting cryogenic stages and room temperature control and storage systems.
This invention has potential applications in various fields, including computational backends for future quantum processors, high-performance supercomputing, and ultrafast digital signal processing. The thermal impedance amplifier could help overcome current limitations in data communication bandwidth and unwanted thermal load on cryogenic stages.
The amplifier works by translating low-voltage superconducting signals into higher-voltage signals that can be used to drive photonic optical modulators, which require voltages greater than 100 mV to function. This eliminates the need for direct voltage amplification by the superconducting devices themselves.
Source: https://www.nist.gov/patents/thermal-impedance-amplifier
Keywords: thermal impedance amplifier, superconducting electronics, voltage amplification
