Making Wide-IF SIS Mixers With Suspended Metal-Beam Leads

A process that employs silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates and silicon (Si) micromachining has been devised for fabricating wide intermediate frequency band (wide-IF) superconductor/ insulator/ superconductor (SIS) mixer devices that result in suspended gold beam leads used for radio-frequency grounding. The mixers are formed on 25-µm-thick silicon membranes. They are designed to operate in the 200 to 300 GHz frequency band, wherein wide-IF receivers for tropospheric- chemistry and astrophysical investigations are necessary. The fabrication process can be divided into three sections: