Size effect on the performance of Nb5N6 bolometer for THz detection

Nb₅N₆ bolometer is a high sensitive terahertz detector at room temperature. The core part of traditional Nb₅N₆ bolometer is microbridge with a typical size of 3 μm × 12 μm. We have recently proposed a method using electron beam lithography (EBL) instead of UV lithography on fabrication of Nb₅N₆ micro bridge, which will reduce the size of the micro-bridge one to two orders of magnitude, the minimum up to 100 nm. We studied the relationship between the size of the micro bridge and the performance of the device, for further improving the sensitivity and the speed of the device and expanding the applications of this kind of detector.