Eric A. Dauler

Comparison of Dielectric Loss in Titanium Nitride and Aluminum Superconducting Resonators

  1. Alexander Melville,
  2. Greg Calusine,
  3. Wayne Woods,
  4. Kyle Serniak,
  5. Evan Golden,
  6. Bethany M. Niedzielski,
  7. David K. Kim,
  8. Arjan Sevi,
  9. Jonilyn L. Yoder,
  10. Eric A. Dauler,
  11. and William D. Oliver
Lossy dielectrics are a significant source of decoherence in superconducting quantum circuits. In this report, we model and compare the dielectric loss in bulk and interfacial dielectrics
in titanium nitride (TiN) and aluminum (Al) superconducting coplanar waveguide (CPW) resonators. We fabricate isotropically trenched resonators to produce a series of device geometries that accentuate a specific dielectric region’s contribution to resonator quality factor. While each dielectric region contributes significantly to loss in TiN devices, the metal-air interface dominates the loss in the Al devices. Furthermore, we evaluate the quality factor of each TiN resonator geometry with and without a post-process hydrofluoric (HF) etch, and find that it reduced losses from the substrate-air interface, thereby improving the quality factor.
arxiv pdf

Analysis and mitigation of interface losses in trenched superconducting coplanar waveguide resonators

  1. Greg Calusine,
  2. Alexander Melville,
  3. Wayne Woods,
  4. Rabindra Das,
  5. Corey Stull,
  6. Vlad Bolkhovsky,
  7. Danielle Braje,
  8. David Hover,
  9. David K. Kim,
  10. Xhovalin Miloshi,
  11. Danna Rosenberg,
  12. Arjan Sevi,
  13. Jonilyn L. Yoder,
  14. Eric A. Dauler,
  15. and William D. Oliver
Improving the performance of superconducting qubits and resonators generally results from a combination of materials and fabrication process improvements and design modifications that
reduce device sensitivity to residual losses. One instance of this approach is to use trenching into the device substrate in combination with superconductors and dielectrics with low intrinsic losses to improve quality factors and coherence times. Here we demonstrate titanium nitride coplanar waveguide resonators with mean quality factors exceeding two million and controlled trenching reaching 2.2 μm into the silicon substrate. Additionally, we measure sets of resonators with a range of sizes and trench depths and compare these results with finite-element simulations to demonstrate quantitative agreement with a model of interface dielectric loss. We then apply this analysis to determine the extent to which trenching can improve resonator performance.
arxiv pdf