Reduction of the jitter of single-flux-quantum time-to-digital converters for time-of-flight mass spectrometry

• We proposed single-flux-quantum (SFQ) time-to-digital converters (TDCs) for TOF-MS.
• SFQ TDC can measure time intervals between multiple signals with high-resolution.
• SFQ TDC can directly convert the time intervals into binary data.
• We designed two types of SFQ TDCs to reduce the jitter.
• The jitter is reduced to less than 100 ps.

We have been developing a high-resolution superconducting time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TOF-MS) system, which utilizes a superconducting strip ion detector (SSID) and a single-flux-quantum (SFQ) time-to-digital converter (TDC). The SFQ TDC can measure time intervals between multiple input signals and directly convert them into binary data. In our previous study, 24-bit SFQ TDC with a 3 × 24-bit First-In First-Out (FIFO) buffer was designed and implemented using the AIST Nb standard process 2 (STP2), whose time resolution and dynamic range are 100 ps and 1.6 ms, respectively. In this study we reduce the jitter of the TDC by using two different approaches: one uses an on-chip clock generator with an on-chip low-pass filter for reducing the noise in the bias current, and the other uses a low-jitter external clock source at room temperature. We confirmed that the jitter is reduced to less than 100 ps in the latter approach.