Performance of High-Resolution Mo/Cu Transition Edge Sensors Fabricated Using a Lift-Off Process

The soft X-ray band below
$\approx 0.5$
keV is expected to provide rich information on metallicity, temperature, and distribution of hot gas in our galaxy and the intergalactic medium. Resolving these densely spaced emission lines requires energy resolution on the order of 1--2 eV. The low count rates from diffuse astrophysical sources also necessitate large collection areas, particularly for a sounding rocket instrument with short exposure times and limited resources. This translates to large pixel sizes (about 1 mm
$^{2}$
) for a reasonable number of read-out channels. To achieve the required energy resolution with 200 nm thin Au absorbers (heat capacity
$C$
about 1 pJ/K), we are developing TES microcalorimeters with very high temperature sensitivity (
$\alpha _{I}$
), low enough current sensitivity (
$\beta _{I}$
), and minimal excess noise (
$M$
). Out of the various fabrication approaches for the TES bilayer we have explored, the lift-off approach (as pioneered for Mo/Au TES by Joel Weber at NIST) so far is the simplest to execute. The simple square TES geometries we have tested to date show promising results for
$\alpha _{I}$
and
$\beta _{I}$
. Measured complex impedance and noise for bare devices without absorbers are well described by two-body thermal models and their excess noise is found to be consistent with predictions for mixed-down Johnson noise by Wessels et al. More sensitive measurements with larger heat capacity are planned to accurately determine excess noise. In this paper, we give an overview of the process and summarize results of our detailed characterization measurements for thermal conductance
$G$
,
$\alpha _{I}$
,
$\beta _{I}$
, and noise for several devices across a range of bias points.