Fabrication of Mo/Au transition-edge sensors for X-ray spectrometry

We present fabrication details of our Mo/Au X-ray microcalorimeters, which are being developed as one of the candidate high resolution spectrometers for the Constellation-X mission. We have reproducibly fabricated Mo/Au transition-edge sensors with Tc's of /spl sim/100 mK on etched silicon nitride membranes and connected via superconducting Nb leads. Our single pixel devices have, so far, attained resolution of 3.7 eV at 3.3 keV. We also discuss our plans for fabrication and testing of fully functional multi-pixel array of X-ray microcalorimeters.