2024 Volume 59 Issue 2 Pages 80-87
Superconducting Josephson devices have been developed for various electronics fields such as highly sensitive magnetometers, voltage standards, and high-speed digital signal processing. In this paper, the author describes two kinds of superconducting digital-to-analog (D/A) converters that generate quantum voltages. One is a balanced-ternary D/A converter comprising asymmetric superconducting quantum interference devices, in which the generation of either a positive or a negative zero-crossing Shapiro step is controlled by an external magnetic flux. The other is a single-flux-quantum (SFQ) D/A converter, in which SFQ pulse-frequency modulation is employed. They generate quantum voltage defined by the reference microwave frequency and the AC Josephson effect.