Fabrication of Low-Noise TES Arrays for the SAFARI Instrument on SPICA

Abstract

Ultra-low-noise transition edge sensors (TES) with noise equivalent power lower than 2 × 10^{- 19} W/Hz^{1 / 2} have been fabricated by SRON, which meet the sensitivity requirements for the far-infrared SAFARI instrument on space infrared telescope for cosmology and astrophysics. Our TES detector is based on a titanium/gold (Ti/Au) thermistor on a silicon nitride (SiN) island. The island is thermally linked with SiN legs to a silicon support structure at the bath temperature. The SiN legs are very thin (250 nm), narrow (500 nm), and long (above 300 μ m); these dimensions are needed in leg-isolated bolometers to achieve the required level of sensitivity. In this paper, we describe the latest fabrication process for our TES bolometers with improved sensitivity.