High-kinetic inductance additive manufactured superconducting microwave cavity

• Published in: Applied physics letters 2017-11, Vol.111 (20)
• Main Authors: Holland, Eric T., Rosen, Yaniv J., Materise, Nicholas, Woollett, Nathan, Voisin, Thomas, Wang, Y. Morris, Torres, Sharon G., Mireles, Jorge, Carosi, Gianpaolo, DuBois, Jonathan L
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aluminum; Applied physics; Cavity resonators; ENGINEERING; Impedance; Inductance; MATERIALS SCIENCE; Penetration depth; Photon counters; Reactance; Resonators; Superconductivity; Temperature; Temperature dependence; Three dimensional printing; Titanium alloys; Titanium base alloys; Transition temperature
• ISSN: 0003-6951; 1077-3118
• DOI: 10.1063/1.5000241

Investigations into the microwave surface impedance of superconducting resonators have led to the development of single photon counters that rely on kinetic inductance for their operation, while concurrent progress in additive manufacturing, “3D printing,” opens up a previously inaccessible design space for waveguide resonators. In this manuscript, we present results from the synthesis of these two technologies in a titanium, aluminum, vanadium (Ti-6Al-4V) superconducting radio frequency resonator which exploits a design unattainable through conventional fabrication means. We find that Ti-6Al-4V has two distinct superconducting transition temperatures observable in heat capacity measurements. The higher transition temperature is in agreement with DC resistance measurements, while the lower transition temperature, not previously known in the literature, is consistent with the observed temperature dependence of the superconducting microwave surface impedance. From the surface reactance, we extract a London penetration depth of 8 ± 3 μm—roughly an order of magnitude larger than other titanium alloys and several orders of magnitude larger than other conventional elemental superconductors.