Low Cost Cryocoolers for Cryoelectronics

The development of cryoelectronics has been hampered by the high cost of refrigeration systems required for cooling to 80 K to 150 K with reasonable efficiency and high reliability. This has now changed. We report on the development of a simple cryogenic cooling system based on early work in the former Soviet Union, that uses components from the commercial refrigeration industry to provide cooling at a cost an order of magnitude lower than any other. This it does with good efficiency and high reliability. It can be expected to open up the market in superconducting electronics, low noise amplifiers and cooled CMOS processors. We describe the system, the reasons the costs are low, and performance figures to date.This work was sponsored by the Advanced Research Projects Agency through the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington.