A Wideband Cryogenic Readout Amplifier with Temperature-Insensitive Gain for SNSPD

Abstract

This paper presents a temperature-insensitive wideband cryogenic amplifier for super-conducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPD). With a proposed folded diode-connected transistor load to realize a good device-tracking feature, the theoretical derivations the simulations and test results prove that the amplifier-gain cell has a stable gain performance over a wide temperature range, solving the issues of a lack of the accurate cryogenic device models. The amplifier achieves a gain of 26 dB from 100 kHz to 1 GHz at 4.2 K, consuming only 1.8 mW from a 1.8 V supply. With a 0.13-μm SiGe BiCMOS process, the chip area is 0.5 mm².