OcteVue: Superconducting Electronics

Design, process integration and applications for superconducting devices and circuits

• Home
• Microelectronic test structures
• Superconducting electronics
• Picosecond on-chip diagnostics
• Technology evaluation
• Avian Navigation

Contact: mketchen@octevue.com

 Custom designed superconducting devices beat out the competition for certain specialized applications

• Understand when it makes sense to invoke superconductivity
• Get advice on custom device designs ranging from SQUIDs, to superconducting qubits, to ultra-low power digital circuits
• Get help building case to use digital Josephson for niche applications
• Learn how to integrate state of the art Josephson technology into a silicon fabrication line

While superconductivity has never made it as a mainstraem technology for computer applications, it has excelled for magnetic detectors, certain low-noise amplifiers and and other low level of integration applications.

Dr. Ketchen worked in design and test in the original IBM effort to build a superconducting computer circa 1980 and was a pioneer in the design, fabrication and characterization of planar dc SQUID devices from the mid 1970’s through the mid 1990’s. This included the invention and development of the now industry standard “washer” SQUID with spiral input coil and integrated miniature susceptometers and magnetometers used with colleagues in a host of ground-breaking physics experiments, including the discovery of half-integral flux quantization in high Tc superconductors. Building on his experience in process integration and running the silicon fab line at IBM Research he was instrumental in the development of the first deep submicron Josephson technology for analog and digital circuits to feature chem-mech poilsh planarization. He co-advised an ISSCC award winning PhD project on superconducting A to D converters and has recently been engaged with ultra-low-power SFQ. For several years he worked on superconducting qubits for quantum computing, including launching and serving as principal investigator of a large multi-institutional government (IARPA) sponsored project on coupled qubits in both 2D and 3D implementations.

Selected Publications:

1. ERSFQ power delivery: a self-consistent model/hardware case study
Ketchen MB, Timmerwilke J, Gibson GW, Bhushan M (2019)
IEEE Trans Appl Supercond 29:7 ; DOI: 10.1109/TASC.2019.2907690
2. High-coherence hybrid superconducting qubit
Steffen M, Kumar S, DiVincenzo DP, Rozen JR, Keefe GA, Rothwell MB, Ketchen MB (2010). Phys Rev Lett 105,100502
3. Superconducting bandpass delta-sigma modulator with 2.23-GHz center frequency and 42.6-GHz sampling rate
Bulzacchelli JF, Lee HS, Misewich JA, Ketchen MB (2002). IEEE J of Solid-State Circuits 37: 1695-1702
Best student paper award as presented at 2002 IEEE international solid state circuits conference, ISSCC
4. Sub-um planarized Nb-AlOx-Nb Josephson junction process for 125 mm wafers developed in partnership with Si technology
Ketchen MB, Pearson DJ, Kleinsasser AW, Hu C-K, Smyth M, Logan J, Stawiasz K, Baran E, Jaso M, Ross T, Petrillo K, Manny M, Basavaiah S, Brodsky S, Kaplan SB, Gallagher WJ, Bhushan M (1991). Appl Phys Lett 59:2609-2611
5. The Josephson cross sectional model experiment
Ketchen MB, Herrell DJ, Anderson CJ (1985) T J. Appl Phys 57: 2550-2574
6. Miniature SQUID susceptometer
Ketchen MB, Kopley T, Ling H (1984). Appl Phys Lett 44: 1008-1010
7. Ultra-low-noise tunnel junction dc SQUID with a tightly coupled planar input coil
Ketchen MB, Jaycox JM (1982). Appl Phys Lett 40: 736-738