Simplified Josephson-junction fabrication process for reproducibly high-performance superconducting qubits
Journal article, 2021

We introduce a simplified fabrication technique for Josephson junctions and demonstrate superconducting Xmon qubits with T1 relaxation times averaging above 50 μs (Q > 1.5 × 1 0 6). Current shadow-evaporation techniques for aluminum-based Josephson junctions require a separate lithography step to deposit a patch that makes a galvanic, superconducting connection between the junction electrodes and the circuit wiring layer. The patch connection eliminates parasitic junctions, which otherwise contribute significantly to dielectric loss. In our patch-integrated cross-type junction technique, we use one lithography step and one vacuum cycle to evaporate both the junction electrodes and the patch. This eliminates a key bottleneck in manufacturing superconducting qubits by reducing the fabrication time and cost. In a study of more than 3600 junctions, we show an average resistance variation of 3.7% on a wafer that contains forty 0.5 × 0.5-cm2 chips, with junction areas ranging between 0.01 and 0.16 μm2. The average on-chip spread in resistance is 2.7%, with 20 chips varying between 1.4% and 2%. For the junction sizes used for transmon qubits, we deduce a wafer-level transition-frequency variation of 1.7%-2.5%. We show that 60%-70% of this variation is attributed to junction-area fluctuations, while the rest is caused by tunnel-junction inhomogeneity. Such high frequency predictability is a requirement for scaling-up the number of qubits in a quantum computer.

qubits

Superconducting Resonators

Josephson Junctions

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Published in

Applied Physics Letters

0003-6951 (ISSN) 1077-3118 (eISSN)

Vol. 118Issue 6 art. no 064002

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Subject Categories

Atom and Molecular Physics and Optics

Other Physics Topics

Condensed Matter Physics

Identifiers

DOI

10.1063/5.0037093

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Latest update

3/18/2021