A Cost-Effective Measurement System for Calibrated Characterization of Microwave Components at Cryogenic Temperatures

The high demand for a large number of microwave components in the quantum industry causes the necessity of verification and characterization of these components at low temperatures from 4 K to millikelvin. This work presents two measurement setups and the adaptation of standard VNA calibration for a cryogenic environment.

The first system is a 2-port measurement setup for precise microwave characterization of superconducting samples at a 4K environment. We show the measurement setup based on a commercial VNA, 4K small-scale cryostat, and control/switching circuit. A 2-port SOLR calibration method was employed and verified at 4K.

The second system is based on 4K large-scale cryostat and performs fast and scalable RF measurements for broadband cryogenic fully integrated multichannel input/output chains for quantum computing.

In particular, we focus on calibration techniques for the cryogenic environment, measurement setup verification, and thermalization of the devices under test. Finally, we present the results of full two-port calibrated cryogenic microwave measurements performed on flexible superconducting RF hardware and the measurement results of multichannel fully-integrated input/output chains for quantum computing.