Merged-element transmons on Si fins: the FinMET

  1. Aranya Goswami,
  2. Anthony P. McFadden,
  3. Hadass Inbar,
  4. Ruichen Zhao,
  5. Corey Rae McRae,
  6. Christopher J. Palmstrom,
  7. and David P. Pappas
A merged-element transmon (MET) device, based on Si fins, is proposed and the steps to form such a „FinMET“ are demonstrated. This new application of fin technology capitalizes
on the anisotropic etch of Si(111) relative to Si(110) to define atomically flat, high aspect ratio Si tunnel barriers with epitaxial superconductor contacts on the parallel side-wall surfaces. This process circumvents the challenges associated with the growth of low-loss insulating barriers on lattice matched superconductors. By implementing low-loss, intrinsic float-zone Si as the barrier material rather than commonly used, lossy Al2O3, the FinMET is expected to overcome problems with standard transmons by (1) reducing dielectric losses; (2) minimizing the formation of two-level system spectral features; (3) exhibiting greater control over barrier thickness and qubit frequency spread, especially when combined with commercial fin fabrication and atomic-layer digital etching; (4) reducing the footprint by four orders of magnitude; and (5) allowing scalable fabrication. Here, fabrication of Si fins on Si(110) substrates with shadow-deposited Al electrodes is demonstrated. The formation of FinMET devices is expected to allow tunnel junction patterning with optical lithography. This facilitates uniform fabrication on Si wafers based on existing infrastructure for fin-based devices while simultaneously avoiding lossy amorphous dielectrics for tunnel barriers.

Overlap junctions for superconducting quantum electronics and amplifiers

  1. Mustafa Bal,
  2. Junling Long,
  3. Ruichen Zhao,
  4. Haozhi Wang,
  5. Sungoh Park,
  6. Corey Rae Harrington McRae,
  7. Tongyu Zhao,
  8. Russell E. Lake,
  9. Daniil Frolov,
  10. Roman Pilipenko,
  11. Silvia Zorzetti,
  12. Alexander Romanenko,
  13. and David P. Pappas
Due to their unique properties as lossless, nonlinear circuit elements, Josephson junctions lie at the heart of superconducting quantum information processing. Previously, we demonstrated
a two-layer, submicrometer-scale overlap junction fabrication process suitable for qubits with long coherence times. Here, we extend the overlap junction fabrication process to micrometer-scale junctions. This allows us to fabricate other superconducting quantum devices. For example, we demonstrate an overlap-junction-based Josephson parametric amplifier that uses only 2 layers. This efficient fabrication process yields frequency-tunable devices with negligible insertion loss and a gain of ~ 30 dB. Compared to other processes, the overlap junction allows for fabrication with minimal infrastructure, high yield, and state-of-the-art device performance.