Patent — available for licensing
Simple Impedance Matched Planar Microwave Blocking Filter
A NASA invention available to explore as a licensing opportunity.
About this technology
Overview
Thermal blocking filters find wide use in cryogenic applications ranging from quantum computing to ultra-low-noise detectors. They can be used to provide the environmental isolation between cooled devices and the warmer temperature supporting bias and readout circuitry. In particular, they are effective in rejecting thermal radiation, limiting radio frequency interference, providing a convenient means of heat sinking signal lines, and realizing a vacuum feedthrough. In a microwave instrumentation setting, a well-defined characteristic impedance, typically approximating a short or matched boundary condition, is desirable. From a radiometric perspective, such filter structures limit the available power by modifying the transmitted response and effectively reducing the photon density of states in the Planck distribution to a single dimension.