Fabrication of superconducting nanowires based on ultra-thin Nb films by means of nanoimprint lithography

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Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is an attractive nonconventional lithographic technique in the fabrication of superconducting nanowires for superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) with large effective detection areas or multi-element devices consisting of hundreds of SNSPDs, due to its low cost and high throughput. In this work, NIL was used to pattern superconducting nanowires with meander-type structures based on ultra-thin (4 nm) Nb films deposited by DC-magnetron sputtering at room temperature. A combination of thermal-NIL and UV-NIL was exploited to transfer the meander pattern from the imprint hard mold to Nb films. The hard mold based on Si wafer was defined by e-beam lithography (EBL), which was almost nonexpendable due to the application of IPS as a soft mold to transfer the patterns to the imprint resist in the NIL process. The specimens fabricated by NIL keep good superconducting properties which are comparable to that by conventional EBL process.