Erlangen 2026 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 60: Methods in Astroparticle Physics III

T 60.4: Vortrag

Mittwoch, 18. März 2026, 17:00–17:15, KS 00.004

Sputtered Transition Edge Sensors for the NUCLEUS Experiment — •Philipp Wasser for the NUCLEUS collaboration — Technical University of Munich

Coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEνNS) enables sensitive studies of neutrino properties and physics beyond the Standard Model at low momentum transfer. The NUCLEUS experiment aims to measure CEνNS using MeV reactor antineutrinos from the Chooz nuclear power plant with gram-scale cryogenic calorimeters at 7 mK. Detecting the resulting sub-keV nuclear recoils requires transition edge sensors (TES) with ultra-low energy thresholds, realized using thin superconducting tungsten films.

Good detector performance requires a sharp superconducting transition near the bulk tungsten value (15 mK), motivating magnetron sputtering as a scalable alternative to electron-beam evaporation. I present the successful development of a dedicated sputter facility allowing to produce detector-grade tungsten films for TES applications.

On differently coated silicon substrates, reproducible transition temperatures around 15 mK and narrow transition widths below 0.5 mK were achieved, allowing the fabrication of highly sensitive TES. A systematic variation of the sputter power revealed a linear dependence of the critical temperature on the applied power, with values varying from 15 mK to 36 mK, enabling controlled tuning of the TES properties via deposition parameters. These results establish sputtered tungsten films as a viable TES technology for NUCLEUS.

Keywords: NUCLEUS Experiment; Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering; Cryogenic Particle Detectors; Transition Edge Sensors; Tungsten Thin-Films