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Niobium-based superconducting tunnel junctions (STJs) with aluminum trapping layers as X-ray detectors were fabricated. We applied a fabrication technique for reducing the leakage current and improving the energy resolution for X-rays at around 6 keV. The edges of two Al layers sandwiching a tunneling barrier were oxidized by plasma discharge. The performance of these new STJs was compared with other types of STJs to which thermal oxidization in an O2 atmosphere had been applied. The oxidization process in O2 plasma significantly improved the energy resolution for X-rays, which reached values (FWHM) of 41 eV, 58 eV, 65 eV, and 129 eV for STJs with the size of 20×20 µm2, 100×100 µm2, 200×200 µm2, and 500×500 µm2, respectively.

The spectra of substrate phonon events induced by illuminating with X-rays obtained with Nb-based superconducting tunnel junctions (STJs) fabricated on a sapphire substrate were examined. We constructed a geometrical model in which the collection efficiency of phonons is proportional to the solid angle subtended to the STJ from the position of the absorption. By using the Monte-Carlo simulation, we succeeded in fairly reproducing the features of the spectra obtained by our measurements. A comparison of the model spectra with the measured ones revealed that a mismatch of the acoustic impedance at the junction-substrate interface and the spatial spread of a phonon cloud play an important role in the determination of the spectra. By including these effects, we show that the measured spectra can be well reproduced by adjusting only one free parameter, the radius of the phonon cloud. We estimated this radius in a sapphire substrate to be ∼20 µm under 5.9 keV X-ray illumination.

Superconducting tunnel junctions exhibit excellent performance in energy resolution together with the high rate counting capabilities which cannot be realized with conventional radiation detectors. We discuss possible improvements in astronomy and other research fields by employing superconducting tunnel junctions as detectors of X-rays and visible photons.