Low-power transimpedance amplifier for cryogenic integration with quantum devices

Abstract

The development of quantum electronic devices operating below a few Kelvin degrees is raising the demand for cryogenic complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor electronics (CMOS) to be used as in situ classical control/readout circuitry. Having a minimal spatial separation between quantum and classical hardware is necessary to limit the electrical wiring to room temperature and the associated heat load and parasitic capacitances. Here, we report prototypical demonstrations of hybrid circuits combining silicon quantum dot devices and a classical transimpedance amplifier, which is characterized and then used to measure the current through the quantum dots. The two devices are positioned next to each other at 4.2 K to assess the use of the cryogenic transimpedance amplifier with respect to a room-temperature transimpedance amplifier. A quantum device built on the same substrate as the transimpedance amplifier is characterized down to 10 mK. The transimpedance amplifier is based on commercial 28 nm fully depleted Silicon-on-insulator (FDSOI) CMOS. It consists of a two-stage Miller-compensated operational amplifier with a 10 MΩ polysilicon feedback resistor, yielding a gain of 1.1×107 V/A. We show that the transimpedance amplifier operates at 10 mK with only 1 μW of power consumption, low enough to prevent heating. It exhibits linear response up to ±40 nA and a measurement bandwidth of 2.6 kHz, which could be extended to about 200 kHz by design optimization. The realization of custom-made electronics in FDSOI technology for cryogenic operation at any temperature will improve measurement speed and quality inside cryostats with higher bandwidth, lower noise, and higher signal-to-noise ratio.

Compact and Energy Efficient Neuron With Tunable Spiking Frequency in 22-nm FDSOI

“…PMOS in NWELL and NMOS in PWELL, is used for all FETs. This structure allows us to isolate the NMOS device from the global substrate through an NWELL ring surrounding the device and facilitates applying an independent bias to the back-gate node [43]. An n-type current mirror with an input pulse generates the pre-synaptic current I syn .…”

“…The Metal-Oxide-Metal (MOM) capacitors are chosen for the capacitors of the circuits as they offer acceptable capacitance density [43]. The final layout is presented in Fig.…”

Memristor-based cryogenic programmable DC sources for scalable in-situ quantum-dot control

“…On the one hand, the most recent custom cryogenic operational amplifier from Ref. [31] dissipates 1 µW, while commercial amplifiers characterized at 4.2 K are expected to dissipate ≈ 50 µW [32]. On the other hand, the power dissipated by the memristors is introduced by the Joule heating proportional to the current flowing V in /R L in the feedback loop.…”

Compact gate-based read-out of multiplexed quantum devices with a cryogenic CMOS active inductor

“…The FD-SOI technology is very well suited for highspeed cryogenic applications 29 with lower variability than bulk technologies 30 , less sensitivity to carrier freeze-out, and threshold-voltage tuning with the use of the back-gate 31 . The integration of classical circuitry with small-enough transistors that exhibit quantum properties is a plus to validate efficiently new circuit architectures 16,19,32 The realized integrated circuit contains the current source, the active inductance with addressable capacitor banks for tunability, the multiplexed DUTs, and the amplification stage (Figure 2a, b). During design, we focused on bringing down the footprint and power consumption of the active inductance being the main original component of our circuit.…”

“…Various solutions have been proposed and partly demonstrated to a first proof-of-concept level. These include low-temperature (de)multiplexers 10,11 , analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters 12,13 , lownoise amplifiers 14,15 , RF oscillators 16,17 , transimpedance amplifiers 18,19 , and digital processors 20,21 . In a DRAM-like strategy 22,23 , these cryogenic components can significantly reduce the number of electrical lines running through the host cryostat, thereby limiting the associated heat load and increasing interconnect reliability.…”