Design and characterization of a lumped element single-ended superconducting microwave parametric amplifier with on-chip flux bias line

  1. Josh Mutus,
  2. Ted White,
  3. Evan Jeffery,
  4. Daniel Sank,
  5. Rami Barends,
  6. Joerg Bochmann,
  7. Yu Chen,
  8. Zijun Chen,
  9. Ben Chiaro,
  10. Andrew Dunsworth,
  11. Julian Kelly,
  12. Anthony Megrant,
  13. Charles Neill,
  14. Peter O'malley,
  15. Pedram Roushan,
  16. Amit Vainsencher,
  17. Jim Wenner,
  18. Irfan Siddiqi,
  19. Rajamani Vijayaraghavan,
  20. Andrew Cleland,
  21. and John Martinis
We demonstrate a lumped-element Josephson Parametric Amplifier (LJPA), using a single-ended design that includes an on-chip, high-bandwidth flux bias line. The amplifier can be pumped
into its region of parametric gain through either the input port or through the flux bias line. Broadband amplification is achieved at a tunable frequency $\omega/2 \pi$ between 5 to 7 GHz with quantum-limited noise performance, a gain-bandwidth product greater than 500 MHz, and an input saturation power in excess of -120 dBm. The bias line allows fast frequency tuning of the amplifier, with variations of hundreds of MHz over time scales shorter than 10 ns.

Sputtered TiN films for superconducting coplanar waveguide resonators

  1. Shinobu Ohya,
  2. Ben Chiaro,
  3. Anthony Megrant,
  4. Charles Neill,
  5. Rami Barends,
  6. Yu Chen,
  7. Julian Kelly,
  8. David Low,
  9. Josh Mutus,
  10. Peter O'Malley,
  11. Pedram Roushan,
  12. Daniel Sank,
  13. Amit Vainsencher,
  14. James Wenner,
  15. Theodore C. White,
  16. Yi Yin,
  17. B. D. Schultz,
  18. Chris J Palmstrøm,
  19. Benjamin A. Mazin,
  20. Andrew N. Cleland,
  21. and John M. Martinis
We present a systematic study of the properties of TiN films by varying the deposition conditions in an ultra-high-vacuum reactive magnetron sputtering chamber. By increasing the deposition
pressure from 2 to 9 mTorr while keeping a nearly stoichiometric composition of Ti(1-x)N(x) (x=0.5), the film resistivity increases, the dominant crystal orientation changes from (100) to (111), grain boundaries become clearer, and the strong compressive strain changes to weak tensile strain. The TiN films absorb a high concentration of contaminants including hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen when they are exposed to air after deposition. With the target-substrate distance set to 88 mm the contaminant levels increase from ~0.1% to ~10% as the pressure is increased from 2 to 9 mTorr. The contaminant concentrations also correlate with in-plane distance from the center of the substrate and increase by roughly two orders of magnitude as the target-substrate distance is increased from 88 mm to 266 mm. These contaminants are found to strongly influence the properties of TiN films. For instance, the resistivity of stoichiometric films increases by around a factor of 5 as the oxygen content increases from 0.1% to 11%. These results suggest that the sputtered TiN particle energy is critical in determining the TiN film properties, and that it is important to control this energy to obtain high-quality TiN films. Superconducting coplanar waveguide resonators made from a series of nearly stoichiometric films grown at pressures from 2 mTorr to 7 mTorr show an increase in intrinsic quality factor from ~10^4 to ~10^6 as the magnitude of the compressive strain decreases from nearly 3800 MPa to approximately 150 MPa and the oxygen content increases from 0.1% to 8%. The films with a higher oxygen content exhibit lower loss, but the nonuniformity of the oxygen incorporation hinders the use of sputtered TiN in larger circuits.