Fabrication-free assessment of microwave losses in germanium-based dielectrics and superconductors

  1. Haoran Lu,
  2. Kushagra Aggarwal,
  3. Xiangqin Wang,
  4. Pauline Drexler,
  5. Daniel Tong,
  6. Maciej W. Olszewski,
  7. Anand Ithepalli,
  8. Lingda Kong,
  9. Debdeep Jena,
  10. Peter L. McMahon,
  11. David A. Muller,
  12. Dominique Bougeard,
  13. and Valla Fatemi
We present a flip-chip-based sensing scheme to measure effective microwave losses associated with target materials for quantum technologies, without requiring any device fabrication
on the material under test. Using this approach, we quantify the microwave losses of a strain-engineered Ge/SiGe quantum well heterostructure and investigate losses arising from its Ge substrate and intermediate layers. The quality factors of the fabricated microwave resonators agree with the losses of dielectric materials independently extracted from flip-chip sensing measurements. We further study the superconductor platinum silicon germanide (PtSiGe) prepared by thermal reaction with a deposited Pt film, finding high microwave losses that limit the suitability of the films studied here as the sole superconductor for high-quality resonator applications. By coating Pt with Nb prior to the reaction, we observe a substantial reduction in microwave loss and a nearly three-fold enhancement of the transport critical temperature. The temperature dependence of the microwave loss is consistent with gap inhomogeneity in both superconducting films. These results identify constraints on material choices, provide design guidance for microwave circuits on planar Ge heterostructures, and demonstrate a fast-turnaround testing method for new materials for superconducting quantum circuits.

High-Q superconducting microwave resonators using MBE titanium nitride

  1. Anand Ithepalli,
  2. Haoran Lu,
  3. Eegene Clara Chung,
  4. Xiangqin Wang,
  5. Amit Rohan Rajapurohita,
  6. Keun-Yeol Park,
  7. Celesta S. Chang,
  8. Peter McMahon,
  9. Huili Grace Xing,
  10. David Muller,
  11. Valla Fatemi,
  12. and Debdeep Jena
Using molecular beam epitaxy, we have realized thin films of titanium nitride (TiN) on c-plane sapphire that exhibit the lowest observed full-width at half maximum X-ray rocking curve
width of 18 arcsec. Though the (111) oriented TiN exhibits an abrupt and crystalline interface with sapphire, for the first time we observe sub-surface defects in the sapphire substrate, which nucleate structural defects in the epitaxial TiN layer. Using quarter-wavelength coplanar waveguide (CPW) resonators in a 3 \textmu m/6 \textmu m/3 \textmu m gap/strip/gap lines in a hanger geometry, we find the internal quality factor of the TiN resonators to be >106 in the single-photon ⟨n⟩∼1 limit at 5.8 GHz and 10 mK, rising to >20×106 at ⟨n⟩∼106. The results are of high interest for applications of superconducting TiN in several areas, and provide a path towards epitaxial Josephson junctions with crystalline barriers in the future for high coherence qubits.

Effect of substrate miscut angle on critical thickness, structural and electronic properties of MBE-grown NbN films on c-plane sapphire

  1. Anand Ithepalli,
  2. Saumya Vashishtha,
  3. Naomi Pieczulewski,
  4. Qiao Liu,
  5. Amit Rohan Rajapurohita,
  6. Matthew Barone,
  7. Darrell Schlom,
  8. David A. Muller,
  9. Huili Grace Xing,
  10. and Debdeep Jena
We report the structural and electronic properties of niobium nitride (NbN) thin films grown by molecular beam epitaxy on c-plane sapphire with miscut angles of 0.5o, 2o, 4o, and 10o
towards m-axis. X-ray diffraction (XRD) scans reveal that the full width at half maximum of the rocking curves around the 1 1 1 reflection of these NbN films decreases with increasing miscut. Starting from 76 arcsecs on 0.5o miscut, the FWHM reduces to almost 20 arcsecs on 10o miscut sapphire indicating improved structural quality. Scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) images indicate that NbN on c-sapphire has around 10 nm critical thickness, irrespective of the substrate miscut, above which it turns columnar. The improved structural property is correlated with a marginal increment in superconducting transition temperature Tc from 12.1 K for NbN on 0.5o miscut sapphire to 12.5 K for NbN on 10o miscut sapphire.