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AIP conference proceedings

Improving the quality factor of superconducting resonators by post-process surface treatment

Daria A. Kalacheva, Gleb Fedorov, Anastasia A. Kulakova, Julia Zotova, Evgeny V. Korostylev, Ivan Khrapach, Alexey Vladimirovich Ustinov, O. V. Astafiev

Published Jan 1, 2020• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a specific method for fabrication of the original evaporation mask and characterisation of the superconduct- ing coplanar waveguide (CPW) resonators based on the shadow evaporation technique [1]. We show that silicon dioxide can be successfully removed by etching process in HF-based solutions. This treatment significantly increases the intrinsic quality factor Qi of the resonators and is also suitable for other superconducting structures operated at temperatures of the order of 20 mK. In this report we present a design of superconducting CPW resonators with a high quality factor to study fundamental problems of high kinetic inductance of aluminum ultra-thin films. Our kinetic inductance research was motivated by the necessity of ultra-short and high quality resonators which could be suitable for qubit systems. Also this kinetic inductance could be used in the development of parametric amplifiers [2] or new types of qubits based on quantum phase slip [3].

DOI
10.1063/5.0011900

Related papers

Ultra high quality factor resonators for kinetic inductance detectors

G. Hammer, S. Wünsch, K. Ilin +1 more

The sensitivity of a kinetic inductance detector is determined by the performance of the cavity circuit and therefore a high quality factor and low phase noise are required. We developed superconducting niobium coplanar waveguide resonators for kinetic inductance detectors at a resonance frequency of 6 GHz. The length of the resonators is adjusted to a quarter of a wavelength which corresponds to ≈ 5.3 mm in our geometry. Different layouts with coplanar waveguide transmission line topology for the resonator were designed and simulated. Some parameters of the device fabrication process were varied. The niobium thin films were deposited by magnetron sputtering on sapphire substrates kept at ambient temperature. The resonators were patterned by photolithography and reactive ion etching and measured at helium temperatures. Because of the quarter wave geometry with one shorted end the reflection parameter was measured. We have studied the influence of the coupling capacitances on quality factor. The optimization includes microwave simulations and implementation in different resonator structures. The measurements of optimized devices showed a very high quality factor above one million (10 6 ). The obtained results and perspective on further development of resonators will be discussed.

Journal of Physics Conference Series•Feb 1, 2008•11 citations

Fabrication and Characterization of Superconductive Coplanar Waveguide Resonators : Fabrication and Characterization of Superconductive Coplanar Waveguide Resonators

Adem Ergül

The objective of this thesis is to evaluate a generic process for fabrication and characterization of the Superconductive coplanar waveguide (CPW) resonators. Superconductive CPW resonators with various lengths and shapes are designed to investigate their electrical and magnetic properties as well as resonance properties and sensitivities. In the first part of thesis, two different models are introduced in order to estimate the nonlinear kinetic inductance of a superconducting CPW resonator. The first model is based on Bean critical-state model and the second one is based on current dependence of London penetration depth. The existence of a shift in resonant frequency of Superconductive CPW resonator caused by a non-linear kinetic inductance is also shown experimentally. Simulations were carried out to estimate the nonlinear kinetic inductance due to the self- induced magnetic field penetration. The rest of the thesis is concerned with development of very smooth Aluminum (Al) thin films with RMS (Root Mean Square) roughness 1~nm and CAD (Computer Aid Design) of superconductive CPW resonators. Experimental investigation of a generic fabrication technique for superconductive CPW resonator is carried out. Many resonators are fabricated with different design parameters, such as centerline or gap width, film thickness and gap capacitors length. The fabrication process is described in detail. Electron Beam Lithography is used to fabricate Nb and Al CPW resonators which are coupled to outer conductors via gap capacitors. We have fabricated GHz frequency CPW resonators with quality factors, Q up 5X10^5.

•Jan 1, 2009•0 citations

Fabrication and Characterization of Superconductive Coplanar Waveguide Resonators

Adem Ergül

The objective of this thesis is to evaluate a generic process for fabrication and characterization of the Superconductive coplanar waveguide (CPW) resonators. Superconductive CPW resonators with various lengths and shapes are designed to investigate their electrical and magnetic properties as well as resonance properties and sensitivities. In the first part of thesis, two different models are introduced in order to estimate the nonlinear kinetic inductance of a superconducting CPW resonator. The first model is based on Bean criticalstate model and the second one is based on current dependence of London penetration depth, λL(I). The existence of a shift in resonant frequency, f0, of Superconductive CPW resonator caused by a non-linear kinetic inductance is also shown experimentally. Simulations were carried out to estimate the nonlinear kinetic inductance due to the selfinduced magnetic field penetration. The rest of the thesis is concerned with development of very smooth Aluminum (Al) thin films with RMS (Root Mean Square) roughness ∼ 1 nm and CAD (Computer Aid Design) of superconductive CPW resonators. Experimental investigation of a generic fabrication technique for superconductive CPW resonator is carried out. Many resonators are fabricated with different design parameters, such as centerline or gap width, film thickness and gap capacitors length. The fabrication process is described in detail. Electron Beam Lithography is used to fabricate Nb and Al CPW resonators which are coupled to outer conductors via gap capacitors. We have fabricated GHz frequency CPW resonators with quality factors, Q up to 5× 10.

•Jan 1, 2009•0 citations

Substrate surface engineering for high-quality silicon/aluminum superconducting resonators

C T Earnest, J. H. Béjanin, T G McConkey +4 more

Abstract Quantum bits (qubits) with long coherence times are an important element for the implementation of medium- and large-scale quantum computers. In the case of superconducting planar qubits, understanding and improving qubits’ quality can be achieved by studying superconducting planar resonators. In this paper, we fabricate and characterize coplanar waveguide resonators made from aluminum thin films deposited on silicon substrates. We perform three different substrate surface treatments prior to aluminum deposition: one chemical treatment based on a hydrofluoric acid clean; one physical treatment consisting of a thermal annealing at 880 °C in high vacuum; and one combined treatment comprising both the chemical and the physical treatments. The aim of these treatments is to remove the two-level state (TLS) defects hosted by the native oxides residing at the various samples’ interfaces. We first characterize the fabricated samples through cross-sectional tunneling electron microscopy, acquiring electron energy loss spectroscopy maps of the samples’ cross sections. These measurements show that both the chemical and the physical treatments almost entirely remove native silicon oxide from the substrate surface and that their combination results in the cleanest interface. Additionally, we analyze the effects of the various substrate treatments on the roughness of the silicon surface by means of atomic force microscopy surface morphology mapping. We then study the quality of the resonators by means of microwave measurements in the ‘quantum regime’, i.e., at a temperature T ∼ 10 mK and at a mean microwave photon number 〈 n ph 〉 ∼ 1 . In this regime, we find that both surface treatments independently improve the resonator’s intrinsic quality factor by ≈172%. The highest quality factor is obtained for the combined treatment, Q i ≈ 0.82 million, corresponding to an improvement by ≈256%. Finally, we find that the TLS quality factor averaged over a time period of 3 h is ∼3 million at 〈 n ph 〉 ∼ 10 , indicating that substrate surface engineering can potentially reduce the TLS loss below other losses such as quasiparticle loss and flux noise.

arXiv:1807.08072•Superconductor Science and Technology•Oct 1, 2018•73 citations

Fabrication and characterization of superconducting coplanar waveguide resonators

Bongkeon Kim, Minkyung Jung, Jihwan Kim +2 more

High-quality superconducting coplanar waveguide (SCPW) resonators are crucial for developing superconducting quantum information devices and sensors. We designed quarter-wavelength SCPW resonators and fabricated the SCPW resonators using Nb thin film. The resonant characteristics were measured at T = 4.2 K, revealing the intrinsic quality factor and the coupling quality factor to be Qi = 4,784 and Qc = 17, 980, respectively. Our design and fabrication techniques would be very useful to develop a gate-tunable superconducting qubit based on the semiconductor nanostructures.

•Dec 1, 2020•1 citation

Characterization of internal quality factors in surface-treated and deep-etched superconducting CPW resonators

Kian L. van der Enden

For quantum computing with superconducting qubits, fabricating transmon qubits with increased coherence time is crucial, especially in view of multi-qubit quantum processors. The fabrication process, geometries and materials used to fabricate a transmon qubit are similar to the fabrication of CPW resonators. However, due to shorter fabrication time and straightforward measurement scheme of the latter, finding a way to increase the internal quality factor Qi in a CPW resonator is a quick way to gain insight into methods to increase the coherence time of a transmon qubit. The main goal of this research is to characterize the Qi at cryogenic temperature and single photon level of CPW resonators that are fabricated with novel surface treatments and etching techniques. The highest Qi is observed for resonators etched using Deep Reactive Ion Etching and HDMS surface treatment, which reached ∼106 at single photon level. This is comparable to the highest Qi reported in literature so far.

•Jan 1, 2014•0 citations
We present a specific method for fabrication of the original evaporation mask and characterisation of the superconduct- ing coplanar waveguide (CPW) resonators based on the shadow evaporation technique [1]. We show that silicon dioxide can be successfully removed by etching process in HF-based solutions. This treatment significantly increases the intrinsic quality factor Qi of the resonators and is also suitable for other superconducting structures operated at temperatures of the order of 20 mK. In this report we present a design of superconducting CPW resonators with a high quality factor to study fundamental problems of high kinetic inductance of aluminum ultra-thin films. Our kinetic inductance research was motivated by the necessity of ultra-short and high quality resonators which could be suitable for qubit systems. Also this kinetic inductance could be used in the development of parametric amplifiers [2] or new types of qubits based on quantum phase slip [3].
The sensitivity of a kinetic inductance detector is determined by the performance of the cavity circuit and therefore a high quality factor and low phase noise are required. We developed superconducting niobium coplanar waveguide resonators for kinetic inductance detectors at a resonance frequency of 6 GHz. The length of the resonators is adjusted to a quarter of a wavelength which corresponds to ≈ 5.3 mm in our geometry. Different layouts with coplanar waveguide transmission line topology for the resonator were designed and simulated. Some parameters of the device fabrication process were varied. The niobium thin films were deposited by magnetron sputtering on sapphire substrates kept at ambient temperature. The resonators were patterned by photolithography and reactive ion etching and measured at helium temperatures. Because of the quarter wave geometry with one shorted end the reflection parameter was measured. We have studied the influence of the coupling capacitances on quality factor. The optimization includes microwave simulations and implementation in different resonator structures. The measurements of optimized devices showed a very high quality factor above one million (10 6 ). The obtained results and perspective on further development of resonators will be discussed.
The objective of this thesis is to evaluate a generic process for fabrication and characterization of the Superconductive coplanar waveguide (CPW) resonators. Superconductive CPW resonators with various lengths and shapes are designed to investigate their electrical and magnetic properties as well as resonance properties and sensitivities. In the first part of thesis, two different models are introduced in order to estimate the nonlinear kinetic inductance of a superconducting CPW resonator. The first model is based on Bean critical-state model and the second one is based on current dependence of London penetration depth. The existence of a shift in resonant frequency of Superconductive CPW resonator caused by a non-linear kinetic inductance is also shown experimentally. Simulations were carried out to estimate the nonlinear kinetic inductance due to the self- induced magnetic field penetration. The rest of the thesis is concerned with development of very smooth Aluminum (Al) thin films with RMS (Root Mean Square) roughness 1~nm and CAD (Computer Aid Design) of superconductive CPW resonators. Experimental investigation of a generic fabrication technique for superconductive CPW resonator is carried out. Many resonators are fabricated with different design parameters, such as centerline or gap width, film thickness and gap capacitors length. The fabrication process is described in detail. Electron Beam Lithography is used to fabricate Nb and Al CPW resonators which are coupled to outer conductors via gap capacitors. We have fabricated GHz frequency CPW resonators with quality factors, Q up 5X10^5.
The objective of this thesis is to evaluate a generic process for fabrication and characterization of the Superconductive coplanar waveguide (CPW) resonators. Superconductive CPW resonators with various lengths and shapes are designed to investigate their electrical and magnetic properties as well as resonance properties and sensitivities. In the first part of thesis, two different models are introduced in order to estimate the nonlinear kinetic inductance of a superconducting CPW resonator. The first model is based on Bean criticalstate model and the second one is based on current dependence of London penetration depth, λL(I). The existence of a shift in resonant frequency, f0, of Superconductive CPW resonator caused by a non-linear kinetic inductance is also shown experimentally. Simulations were carried out to estimate the nonlinear kinetic inductance due to the selfinduced magnetic field penetration. The rest of the thesis is concerned with development of very smooth Aluminum (Al) thin films with RMS (Root Mean Square) roughness ∼ 1 nm and CAD (Computer Aid Design) of superconductive CPW resonators. Experimental investigation of a generic fabrication technique for superconductive CPW resonator is carried out. Many resonators are fabricated with different design parameters, such as centerline or gap width, film thickness and gap capacitors length. The fabrication process is described in detail. Electron Beam Lithography is used to fabricate Nb and Al CPW resonators which are coupled to outer conductors via gap capacitors. We have fabricated GHz frequency CPW resonators with quality factors, Q up to 5× 10.
Abstract Quantum bits (qubits) with long coherence times are an important element for the implementation of medium- and large-scale quantum computers. In the case of superconducting planar qubits, understanding and improving qubits’ quality can be achieved by studying superconducting planar resonators. In this paper, we fabricate and characterize coplanar waveguide resonators made from aluminum thin films deposited on silicon substrates. We perform three different substrate surface treatments prior to aluminum deposition: one chemical treatment based on a hydrofluoric acid clean; one physical treatment consisting of a thermal annealing at 880 °C in high vacuum; and one combined treatment comprising both the chemical and the physical treatments. The aim of these treatments is to remove the two-level state (TLS) defects hosted by the native oxides residing at the various samples’ interfaces. We first characterize the fabricated samples through cross-sectional tunneling electron microscopy, acquiring electron energy loss spectroscopy maps of the samples’ cross sections. These measurements show that both the chemical and the physical treatments almost entirely remove native silicon oxide from the substrate surface and that their combination results in the cleanest interface. Additionally, we analyze the effects of the various substrate treatments on the roughness of the silicon surface by means of atomic force microscopy surface morphology mapping. We then study the quality of the resonators by means of microwave measurements in the ‘quantum regime’, i.e., at a temperature T ∼ 10 mK and at a mean microwave photon number 〈 n ph 〉 ∼ 1 . In this regime, we find that both surface treatments independently improve the resonator’s intrinsic quality factor by ≈172%. The highest quality factor is obtained for the combined treatment, Q i ≈ 0.82 million, corresponding to an improvement by ≈256%. Finally, we find that the TLS quality factor averaged over a time period of 3 h is ∼3 million at 〈 n ph 〉 ∼ 10 , indicating that substrate surface engineering can potentially reduce the TLS loss below other losses such as quasiparticle loss and flux noise.
High-quality superconducting coplanar waveguide (SCPW) resonators are crucial for developing superconducting quantum information devices and sensors. We designed quarter-wavelength SCPW resonators and fabricated the SCPW resonators using Nb thin film. The resonant characteristics were measured at T = 4.2 K, revealing the intrinsic quality factor and the coupling quality factor to be Qi = 4,784 and Qc = 17, 980, respectively. Our design and fabrication techniques would be very useful to develop a gate-tunable superconducting qubit based on the semiconductor nanostructures.
For quantum computing with superconducting qubits, fabricating transmon qubits with increased coherence time is crucial, especially in view of multi-qubit quantum processors. The fabrication process, geometries and materials used to fabricate a transmon qubit are similar to the fabrication of CPW resonators. However, due to shorter fabrication time and straightforward measurement scheme of the latter, finding a way to increase the internal quality factor Qi in a CPW resonator is a quick way to gain insight into methods to increase the coherence time of a transmon qubit. The main goal of this research is to characterize the Qi at cryogenic temperature and single photon level of CPW resonators that are fabricated with novel surface treatments and etching techniques. The highest Qi is observed for resonators etched using Deep Reactive Ion Etching and HDMS surface treatment, which reached ∼106 at single photon level. This is comparable to the highest Qi reported in literature so far.