Toward Single-Photon Detection with Superconducting Niobium Diselenide Nanowires

We present superconducting nanowire photodetectors based on hBN-encapsulated, few-layer NbSe<sub>2</sub>, showing signatures of single-photon sensitivity. The top-down fabrication process preserves the superconducting properties of NbSe<sub>2</sub>, as confirmed by low-temperature transport measurements showing comparable results to unpatterned sheets, and it maintains a contact and wiring resistance down to ∼30 Ω at <i>T</i> = 4 K. Meandered NbSe<sub>2</sub> nanowires exhibit high responsivity (up to 4.9 × 10<sup>4</sup> V/W) over a spectral range of 650-1550 nm in a closed-cycle cryostat at 4 K, outperforming samples with different geometries in this work. The meander achieves a recovery time of (135 ± 36) ns, a system timing jitter of (1103 ± 7) ps, and a detection efficiency of ∼0.01% at 0.95<i>I</i> <sub>c</sub>. A linear increase of the count rate with the number of photons between the noise level and the latching threshold offers a signature of single-photon sensitivity at 1100 nm.

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Publication Details

Journal
ACS Photonics
Published
2025-09-02
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1021/acsphotonics.5c01195
Citations
1
Primary Topic
Quantum Information and Cryptography
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
2.48

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article

Toward Single-Photon Detection with Superconducting Niobium Diselenide Nanowires

Kai Müller, Niels Gregersen, Anna Maria Palermo, Jonathan J. Finley et al.
1 citations
ACS Photonics
Quantum Information and Cryptography
2.48
article

Toward Single-Photon Detection with Superconducting Niobium Diselenide Nanowires

Kai Müller, Niels Gregersen, Anna Maria Palermo, Jonathan J. Finley, Athanasios Paralikis, Lucio Zugliani, Battulga Munkhbat, Paweł Wyborski, S. Vaitiekėnas, Matteo Barbone, Pietro Metuh, Sherwan Jamo
article en
1 citations

Abstract

We present superconducting nanowire photodetectors based on hBN-encapsulated, few-layer NbSe<sub>2</sub>, showing signatures of single-photon sensitivity. The top-down fabrication process preserves the superconducting properties of NbSe<sub>2</sub>, as confirmed by low-temperature transport measurements showing comparable results to unpatterned sheets, and it maintains a contact and wiring resistance down to ∼30 Ω at <i>T</i> = 4 K. Meandered NbSe<sub>2</sub> nanowires exhibit high responsivity (up to 4.9 × 10<sup>4</sup> V/W) over a spectral range of 650-1550 nm in a closed-cycle cryostat at 4 K, outperforming samples with different geometries in this work. The meander achieves a recovery time of (135 ± 36) ns, a system timing jitter of (1103 ± 7) ps, and a detection efficiency of ∼0.01% at 0.95<i>I</i> <sub>c</sub>. A linear increase of the count rate with the number of photons between the noise level and the latching threshold offers a signature of single-photon sensitivity at 1100 nm.

ACS PhotonicsVol. 12(11)
University of Copenhagen (DK), XLAB (Slovenia) (SI), Schott (Germany) (DE), Quantum Devices (United States) (US), Technical University of Munich (DE), Technical University of Denmark (DK)
Villum Fonden, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Technische Universität München, H2020 European Research Council
Openalex Percentile: Top 9%
Quantum Information and Cryptography
2.48
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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