Metalized 3-D Printed Plastic Resonator Demonstrating Superconductivity Below 4 K

We report the observation of a superconducting transition in a 3-D printed, metalized plastic device. A cylindrical cavity is 3-D printed from a photosensitive polymer resin and then a 20-<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu $ </tex-math></inline-formula>m layer of tin is deposited. A resonant TE microwave mode at 13.41 GHz is observed to reduce its losses by an order of magnitude once it is cooled below 3.72 K, the superconducting transition temperature of tin, with the mode’s Q-factor increasing from <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2.7 \times 10^{4}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> to <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$4.0 \times 10^{5}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>.