Operation of high-T-c SFQ devices at near liquid nitrogen temperature

Abstract

As the operating temperature of the SFQ logic circuits gets higher by using high-T-c superconductors, the effect of noise on switching a Josephson junction to the voltage state becomes more important. In this paper, we report our work on high-T-c SFQ RS flip-flop which was made with YBCO thin film deposited on a SrTiO3 bi-crystal. The circuit operated correctly at 71 K over the 200 computer-generated clock cycles without making errors, where a reset or a set operation was made over one clock cycle. Good agreement between the measured data and the calculation based on the thermal activation theory was obtained. The effective noise temperature used to fit the data was much higher than the physical temperature. This could be due to the instrument noise. Improvement in the measurement set-up might reduce the effective noise temperature. Also our measurement results indicate that the elevation of the operating temperature near the liquid nitrogen temperature may not affect the margin of the circuit. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.