Tuesday, 19 April 2005

MIT Lincoln Laboratory Auditorium

Refreshments: 3:30 PM, Talk 4 - 5 PM

Joint Meeting with the IEEE Life Members

Dr. Daniel E. Oates, MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Superconducting electronics is being employed in a variety of specialized applications ranging from voltage standards to cellular telephone base stations to high-energy particle accelerators. It is also the subject of research for future applications in both supercomputers and quantum computers. Following a general introduction to superconductivity and superconducting materials, several examples of applications of superconducting electronics will be presented and discussed. Both low temperature (LTS) and high temperature (HTS) superconducting examples will be included in the talk. In HTS, front-end filters for microwave frequency receivers are one of the important applications. Such devices are now in commercial use. This application will be presented in some detail showing advantages and limitations. In LTS, fast analog to digital converters and high-speed logic circuits are among the important applications. LTS circuits are also being considered for quantum computing applications. Since cryogenic operation of superconductors is obviously necessary, a short discussion of the technologies available for cooling will be included. This will reflect the enormous progress in closed-cycle-cooler technology in recent years.

Reference: Proc. IEEE, Special Issue, Applications of Superconductivity, October 2004.

Daniel E. Oates received his B.A. degree in physics from Yale University in 1965 and the Ph.D. degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1971. He held an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship at the University of Bonn, Federal Republic of Germany in 1971-72. From 1973-78 he was with Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, New Jersey. Since 1978 he has been at Lincoln Laboratory. His research at Lincoln Laboratory has included investigations of surface-acoustic-wave and bulk-acoustic-wave devices. Since 1988 his primary research interests have been in superconducting electronics, especially applications in frequency control and microwave-frequency analog signal processing. Motivated by the applications of superconductors, he has investigated the fundamental properties of both high-T_c and low-T_c superconductor materials at microwave frequencies and at high microwave power levels. The emphasis of the basic research over the last few years has been the study of the nonlinearities in the HTS cuprate materials. He is the author or coauthor of more than 100 publications. He is a member of the IEEE, MRS, and APS.