Krypton-sputtered tantalum films for scalable high-performance quantum devices

  1. Maciej W. Olszewski,
  2. Lingda Kong,
  3. Simon Reinhardt,
  4. Daniel Tong,
  5. Xinyi Du,
  6. Gabriele Di Gianluca,
  7. Haoran Lu,
  8. Saswata Roy,
  9. Luojia Zhang,
  10. Aleksandra B. Biedron,
  11. David A. Muller,
  12. and Valla Fatemi
Superconducting qubits based on tantalum (Ta) thin films have demonstrated the highest-performing microwave resonators and qubits. This makes Ta an attractive material for superconducting
quantum computing applications, but, so far, direct deposition has largely relied on high substrate temperatures exceeding \SI{400}{\celsius} to achieve the body-centered cubic phase, BCC (\textalpha-Ta). This leads to compatibility issues for scalable fabrication leveraging standard semiconductor fabrication lines. Here, we show that changing the sputter gas from argon (Ar) to krypton (Kr) promotes BCC Ta synthesis on silicon (Si) at temperatures as low as \SI{200}{\celsius}, providing a wide process window compatible with back-end-of-the-line fabrication standards. Furthermore, we find these films to have substantially higher electronic conductivity, consistent with clean-limit superconductivity. We validated the microwave performance through coplanar waveguide resonator measurements, finding that films deposited at \SI{250}{\celsius} and \SI{350}{\celsius} exhibit a tight performance distribution at the state of the art. Higher temperature-grown films exhibit higher losses, in correlation with the degree of Ta/Si intermixing revealed by cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy. Finally, with these films, we demonstrate transmon qubits with a relatively compact, \SI{20}{\micro\meter} capacitor gap, achieving a median quality factor up to 14 million.

A Josephson junction supercurrent diode

  1. Christian Baumgartner,
  2. Lorenz Fuchs,
  3. Andreas Costa,
  4. Simon Reinhardt,
  5. Sergei Gronin,
  6. Geoffrey C. Gardner,
  7. Tyler Lindemann,
  8. Michael J. Manfra,
  9. Paulo E. Faria Junior,
  10. Denis Kochan,
  11. Jaroslav Fabian,
  12. Nicola Paradiso,
  13. and Christoph Strunk
Transport is called nonreciprocal when not only the sign, but also the absolute value of the current, depends on the polarity of the applied voltage. It requires simultaneously broken
inversion and time-reversal symmetries, e.g., by the interplay of spin-orbit coupling and magnetic field. So far, observation of nonreciprocity was always tied to resistivity, and dissipationless nonreciprocal circuit elements were elusive. Here, we engineer fully superconducting nonreciprocal devices based on highly-transparent Josephson junctions fabricated on InAs quantum wells. We demonstrate supercurrent rectification far below the transition temperature. By measuring Josephson inductance, we can link nonreciprocal supercurrent to the asymmetry of the current-phase relation, and directly derive the supercurrent magnetochiral anisotropy coefficient for the first time. A semi-quantitative model well explains the main features of our experimental data. Nonreciprocal Josephson junctions have the potential to become for superconducting circuits what pn-junctions are for traditional electronics, opening the way to novel nondissipative circuit elements.