Nate Newman
Dept. of Chemical and Materials Engineering, Arizona State University
November 12, 2001
Circuits that can process digital information at over 100+ Gigabits per second are desired for a number of communication applications. The realization of such a system would, for example, facilitate a 16 fold increase in existing fiber network's transmission speed. A new circuit family that can operate at these ultra-fast speeds has been proposed by Likharev. In contrast to using electrons as in conventional electronics, it works by manipulating single quanta of magnetic flux. My group at ASU and our collaborators have developed the first material and device technology that can achieve the desired speeds. It is based on superconductor Josephson technology containing normal metal barriers tuned near the Metal-Insulator barrier. These devices are fabricated on Si wafers and are a "drop-in" replacement in structures currently fabricated by low-Tc superconductor device foundries. In the talk, I will describe the materials, physics and engineering of this exciting new technology.