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We have measured the resistance R(T, I, Bext) of a superconducting transition edge sensor over the entire transition region on a fine scale, producing a 4-dimensional map of the resistance surface. The dimensionless temperature and current sensitivities (α≡∂logR/∂logT|Iandβ≡∂logR/∂logI|T) of the TES resistance have been determined at each point. α and β are closely related to the sensor performance, but show a great deal of complex, large amplitude fine structure over large portions of the surface that is sensitive to the applied magnetic field. We discuss the relation of this structure to the presence of Josephson “weak link” fringes.

Superconducting/normal metal bilayers with tunable transition temperature are a critical ingredient to the fabrication of high performance transition edge-sensors (TES). Popular material choices include Mo/Au and Mo/Cu, which exhibit good environmental stability and provide low resistivity films to achieve adequate thermal conductivity. The deposition of high quality Mo films requires sufficient adatom mobility, which can be provided by energetic ions in sputter deposition, or by heating the substrate in an e-beam evaporation process. The bilayer Tc depends sensitively on the exact deposition conditions of the Mo layer and the superconducting/normal metal interface. Because the individual contributions (strain, crystalline structure, contamination) are difficult to disentangle and control, reproducibility remains a challenge. Recently, we have demonstrated that low energy ion beam assist during e-beam evaporation offers an alternative route to reliably produce high quality Mo films without the use of substrate heating. The energy and momentum delivered by the ion beam provides an additional control knob to tune film properties such as resistivity and stress. In this report we describe modifications made to the commercial end-Hall ion-source to avoid iron contamination allowing us to produce superconducting Mo films. We show that the ion beam is effective at enhancing the bilayer interface transparency and that bilayers can be further tuned to reduced Tc and higher conductivity by vacuum annealing.

With the improving energy resolution of transitionedge sensor (TES) based microcalorimeters, performance verification and calibration of these detectors has become increasingly challenging, especially in the energy range below 1 keV where fluorescent atomic X-ray lines have linewidths that are wider than the detector energy resolution and require impractically high statistics to determine the gain and deconvolve the instrumental profile. Better behaved calibration sources such as grating monochromators are too cumbersome for space missions and are difficult to use in the lab. As an alternative, we are exploring the use of pulses of 3 eV optical photons delivered by an optical fiber to generate combs of known energies with known arrival times. Here, we discuss initial results of this technique obtained with 2 eV and 0.7 eV resolution X-ray microcalorimeters. With the 2 eV detector, we have achieved photon number resolution for pulses with mean photon number up to 133 (corresponding to 0.4 keV).