Oxide-nitride heteroepitaxy for low-loss dielectrics in superconducting quantum circuits

  1. David A. Garcia-Wetten,
  2. Mitchell J. Walker,
  3. Peter G. Lim,
  4. André Vallières,
  5. Maria G. Jimenez-Guillermo,
  6. Miguel A. Alvarado,
  7. Dominic P. Goronzy,
  8. Anna Grassellino,
  9. Jens Koch,
  10. Vinayak P. Dravid,
  11. Mark C. Hersam,
  12. and Michael J. Bedzyk
Superconducting qubits show great promise for the realization of fault-tolerant quantum computing, but lossy, amorphous dielectrics limit current technology. Identifying highly crystalline
and stoichiometric dielectrics with intrinsically low microwave loss is therefore a central materials challenge, yet experimentally validated platforms remain scarce. In this work, we integrate a crystalline dielectric into a heteroepitaxial TiN/γ-Al2O3/TiN trilayer grown via pulsed laser deposition. Correlative high-resolution imaging, diffraction, and spectroscopy measurements confirm the single-crystal quality and chemical integrity of all layers, with minimal defects and limited anion interdiffusion across the oxide-nitride interfaces. Using microwave lumped-element resonators with parallel-plate capacitors, we report the first direct measurement of the dielectric loss of epitaxial γ-Al2O3, for which we find a low intrinsic two-level system loss, δ0TLS=(2.8±0.1)×10−5. These results establish heteroepitaxial oxides on transition metal nitrides as an attractive materials platform for superconducting quantum circuits, particularly for integration into compact device architectures such as merged-element transmons and microwave kinetic inductance detectors.