Competence Center for Micro- and Nanotechnologies

A commercially available and fully automated 10-V Josephson voltage standard system with a liquid helium free cooling has been developed as a result of the cooperation between the Institute of Photonic Technology and Supracon AG, both in Jena, Germany. The system operates with an array of 19 700 superconductor–insulator–superconductor Josephson tunnel junctions installed in a pulse tube cooler. A stable operation is achieved by the proper integration of the voltage standard circuit to the cold stage of the cryocooler. Different operation setups are discussed. A direct comparison of a cryocooler-based Josephson voltage standard system versus a liquid-helium-based system was performed at a voltage level of 10 V. We obtained a voltage difference of 1.3 nV with a total combined uncertainty of 2 nV. This corresponds to a relative uncertainty of 2 × 10−10.