Fabrication of the CALDER light detectors

CALDER (Cryogenic wide-Area Light Detectors with Excellent Resolution) is a project for the development of large area phonon mediated KIDs (Kinetic Inductance Detectors), for the detection of Cherenkov radiation emitted in TeO2 bolometers to search for neutrinoless double beta decay . The KIDs are superconducting detectors made of high quality factor superconducting resonators, which are coupled to a transmission line for signal readout. We designed and fabricated KIDs using aluminum. The Al thin films (40 nm) were evaporated on Si(100) high resistivity silicon wafers using an electron beam evaporator in a HV chamber. In this work we report the steps of the fabrication process. All devices are made in direct-write using Electron Beam Lithography (EBL), positive tone resist poly-methyl methacrylate (PMMA) and lift off process. In order to improve the sensitivity of the detectors we have started recently to use sub-stoichiometric TiN deposited by means of DC magnetron sputtering and we will optimize a different fabrication process.