Boron-doped diamond granular thin films are known to exhibit superconductivity with an optimal critical temperature of Tc = 7.2K. Here we report the measured complex surface impedance of Boron-doped diamond films in the microwave frequency range using a resonant technique. Experimentally measured inductance values are in good agreement with estimates obtained from the normal state sheet resistance of the material. The magnetic penetration depth temperature dependence is consistent with that of a fully-gapped s-wave superconductor. Boron-doped diamond films should find application where high kinetic inductance is needed, such as microwave kinetic inductance detectors and quantum impedance devices.
Granular aluminum is a promising material for high kinetic inductance devices such as qubit circuits. It has the advantage over atomically disordered materials such as NbN_x, to maintain a high kinetic inductance concomitantly with a high quality factor. We show that high quality nano-scale granular aluminum films having a sharp superconducting transition with normal state resistivity values of the order of 1x10^5 μΩcm and kinetic inductance values of the order of 10 nH/sq can be obtained, surpassing state of the art values. We argue that this is a result of the different nature of the metal-t…
Microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs) are thin film, cryogenic, superconducting resonators. Incident Cooper pair-breaking radiation increases their kinetic inductance, thereby measurably lowering their resonant frequency. For a given resonant frequency, the highest MKID responsivity is obtained by maximizing the kinetic inductance fraction $α$. However, in circuits with $α$ close to unity, the low supercurrent density reduces the maximum number of readout photons before bifurcation due to self-Kerr non-linearity, therefore setting a bound for the maximum $α$ before the noise equivalen…
A superconducting boron doped nanocrystalline diamond (B-NCD) coplanar waveguide resonator (CPR) is presented for kinetic inductance ($L_k$) and penetration depth ($λ_{\rm{L}}$) measurements at microwave frequencies of 0.4 to 1.2 GHz and at temperatures below 3 K. Using a simplified effective medium CPR approach, this work demonstrates that thin granular B-NCD films ($t\approx $ 500 nm) on Si have a large penetration depth ($λ_{\rm{L}}\approx 4.3$ to 4.4 $μ$m), and therefore an associated high kinetic inductance ($L_{k,\square} \approx $ 670 to 690 pH/$\square$). These values are much larger t…
Superconducting granular aluminum is attracting increasing interest due to its high kinetic inductance and low dissipation, favoring its use in kinetic inductance particle detectors, superconducting resonators or quantum bits. We perform switching current measurements on DC-SQUIDs, obtained by introducing two identical geometric constrictions in granular aluminum rings of various normal-state resistivities in the range from $ρ_\mathrm{n} = 250\,μΩ\mathrm{cm}$ to $5550\,μΩ\mathrm{cm}$. The relative high kinetic inductance of the SQUID loop, in the range of tens of nH, leads to a suppression of …
We perform a detailed calculation of the various contributions to the fluctuation conductivity of a granular metal close to its superconducting transition. We find three distinct regions of power law behavior in reduced temperature, $η=(T-T_c)/T_c$, with crossovers at $Γ/T_c$ and $E_{Th}/T_c$, where $Γ$ is the electron tunneling rate, and $E_{Th}$ is the Thouless energy of a grain. The calculation includes both intergrain and intragrain degrees of freedom. This complete theory of the fluctuation region in granular superconductors is then compared to experimental results from boron-doped nanocr…
A phase slip is a localized disturbance in the coherence of a superconductor allowing an abrupt 2$π$ phase shift. Phase slips are a ubiquitous feature of one-dimensional superconductors and also have an analogue in two-dimensions. Here we present electrical transport measurements on boron-doped nanocrystalline diamond (BNCD) microbridges where, despite their three-dimensional macroscopic geometry, we find clear evidence of phase slippage in both the resistance-temperature and voltage-current characteristics. We attribute this behavior to the unusual microstructure of BNCD. We argue that the co…
High kinetic inductance materials constitute a valuable resource for superconducting quantum circuits and hybrid architectures. Superconducting granular aluminum (grAl) reaches kinetic sheet inductances in the nH/$\square$ range, with proven applicability in superconducting quantum bits and microwave detectors. Here we show that the single photon internal quality factor $Q_{\mathrm{i}}$ of grAl microwave resonators exceeds $10^5$ in magnetic fields up to 1T, aligned in-plane to the grAl films. Small perpendicular magnetic fields, in the range of 0.5mT, enhance $Q_{\mathrm{i}}$ by approximately…
Superconducting high kinetic inductance elements constitute a valuable resource for quantum circuit design and millimeter-wave detection. Granular aluminum (GrAl) in the superconducting regime is a particularly interesting material since it has already shown a kinetic inductance in the range of nH$/\Box$ and its deposition is compatible with conventional Al/AlOx/Al Josephson junction fabrication. We characterize microwave resonators fabricated from GrAl with a room temperature resistivity of $4 \times 10^3\,μΩ\cdot$cm, which is a factor of 3 below the superconductor to insulator transition, sh…
We investigate thin films of conducting aluminium-oxide, also known as granular aluminium, as a material for superconducting high quality, high kinetic inductance circuits. The films are deposited by an optimised reactive DC magnetron sputter process and characterised using microwave measurement techniques at milli-Kelvin temperatures. We show that, by precise control of the reactive sputter conditions, a high room temperature sheet resistance and therefore high kinetic inductance at low temperatures can be obtained. For a coplanar waveguide resonator with 1.5\,k$Ω$ sheet resistance and a kine…
We have studied superconducting coplanar-waveguide (CPW) resonators fabricated from disordered (granular) films of Aluminum. Very high kinetic inductance of these films, inherent to disordered materials, allows us to implement ultra-short (200 $μ$m at a 5GHz resonance frequency) and high-impedance (up to 5 k$Ω$) half-wavelength resonators. We have shown that the intrinsic losses in these resonators at temperatures $\lesssim 250$ mK are limited by resonator coupling to two-level systems in the environment. The demonstrated internal quality factors are comparable with those for CPW resonators ma…
The introduction of crystalline defects or dopants can give rise to so-called "dirty superconductors", characterized by reduced coherence length and quasiparticle mean free path. In particular, granular superconductors such as Granular Aluminum (GrAl), consisting of remarkably uniform grains connected by Josephson contacts have attracted interest since the sixties thanks to their rich phase diagram and practical advantages, like increased critical temperature, critical field, and kinetic inductance. Here we report the measurement and modeling of circuit quantum electrodynamics properties of Gr…
In this paper, we present results on magnetization properties of boron nitride-carbon (BN-C) and boron carbide-carbon (B4C-C) granular mixtures. The temperature-dependent magnetization for field-cooled during cooling and field-cooled during warming shows a kind of thermal hysteresis that is always seen around a metamagnetic phase transition from an antiferromagnetic martensite to a ferromagnetic austenite phase. The low-temperature magnetization has an upward turn that can be attributed to superparamagnetism, diamagnetic shielding, and trapped flux characteristic to high-temperature supercondu…
Superconducting boron doped silicon is a promising material for integrated silicon quantum devices. In particular, its low electronic density and moderate disorder make it a suitable candidate for the fabrication of large inductances with low losses at microwave frequencies. Here, we study experimentally the electrodynamics of superconducting silicon thin layers patterned in coplanar waveguide resonators, targeting three key properties: kinetic inductance, internal losses, and the variation of these quantities with the read-out power. We report the first observation in a doped semiconductor of…
Anomalous resistive peaks below the superconducting transition temperature in heavily boron doped nanocrystalline diamond films could have potential application in switching devices, however the exact origin is still under study. We establish a temperature dependence of this resistive phase similar to what has been reported for in Josephson junction arrays and other granular superconductors where the charge duel of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition has been observed. Non-linear magnetoresistance with a temperature dependent peak feature below the critical field are also pres…
The occurrence of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition is investigated in heavily boron-doped nanocrystalline diamond films through a combination of current-voltage and resistance measurements. We observe a robust BKT transition in the nanocrystalline diamond films with smaller grain size along with transport features related to vortex pinning. The vortex core energy determined through analysis of the resistance temperature curves was found to be anti-correlated to the BKT transition temperatures. It is also observed that the higher BKT temperature is related to an increased vo…
The magnetic field dependence of the superconductivity in nanocrystalline boron doped diamond thin films is reported. Evidence of a glass state in the phase diagram is presented, as demonstrated by electrical resistance and magnetic relaxation measurements. The position of the phase boundary in the H-T plane is determined from resistance data by detailed fitting to zero-dimensional fluctuation conductivity theory. This allows determination of the boundary between resistive and non-resistive behavior to be made with greater precision than the standard ad hoc onset/midpoint/offset criterion.
Superconducting transport properties of granular materials are greatly influenced by the microstructure. We show that in heavily boron-doped diamond films (HBDDF) films some sharp transport features can be manipulated by applying a magnetic field and controlled finite bias current. We demonstrate the conductivity cross-over from dirty metal to the superconducting state through an insulating peak arising at a very low current or magnetic field region and particularly pronounced negative magnetoresistance with periodic oscillatory features. The current-voltage characteristics show features of th…
We present resistance versus temperature data for a series of boron-doped nanocrystalline diamond films whose grain size is varied by changing the film thickness. Upon extracting the fluctuation conductivity near to the critical temperature we observe three distinct scaling regions -- 3D intragrain, quasi-0D, and 3D intergrain -- in confirmation of the prediction of Lerner, Varlamov and Vinokur. The location of the dimensional crossovers between these scaling regions allows us to determine the tunnelling energy and the Thouless energy for each film. This is a demonstration of the use of \emph{…
Granular aluminium is a high kinetic inductance thin film superconductor which, when formed into nanowires can undergo an intrinsic electromigration process. We use a combination of experimental and computational approaches to investigate the role of grain morphology and distribution in granular aluminium thin films, when formed into nanowire constrictions. Treating the granular aluminium film as a network of randomly distributed resistors with parameters motivated by the film microstructure allows us to model the electrical characteristics of the nanowires. This model provides estimates of th…
We report on transport features in heavily boron doped nanocrystalline diamond (BNCD) films which are not seen in conventional (s-wave) granular superconductors. Observations include an anomalous resistance peak near to the superconducting transition temperature as well as a strong zero bias conductance peak in the current-voltage spectra. The effect of finite bias current on the evolution of the resistance peak is systematically investigated in this system. The shape of the resistance-temperature curves near the critical temperature is seen to be strongly influenced by both magnetic field and…
Superconducting quantum information processing machines are predominantly based on microwave circuits with relatively low characteristic impedance, of about 100 Ohm, and small anharmonicity, which can limit their coherence and logic gate fidelity. A promising alternative are circuits based on so-called superinductors, with characteristic impedances exceeding the resistance quantum $R_Q = 6.4$ k$Ω$. However, previous implementations of superinductors, consisting of mesoscopic Josephson junction arrays, can introduce unintended nonlinearity or parasitic resonant modes in the qubit vicinity, degr…
Study of Magnetic Field Resilient High Impedance High-Kinetic Inductance Superconducting Resonators
Institute of Physics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL)（瑞士联邦理工学院物理研究所）；Center for Quantum Science and Engineering, EPFL（苏黎世联邦理工学院量子科学与工程中心）；Department of Physics, ETH Zurich（苏黎世联邦理工学院物理系）
FeTe, a non-superconducting parent compound in the iron-chalcogenide family, becomes superconducting after annealing in oxygen. Under the presence of magnetism, spin-orbit coupling, inhomogeneity and lattice distortion, the nature of its superconductivity is not well understood. Here, we combined mutual inductance technique with magneto transport to study the magnetization and superconductivity of FeTe thin films. We found that the films with the highest Tc showed non-saturating superfluid density and a strong magnetic hysteresis distinct from that in a homogeneous superconductor. Such hystere…
Encapsulation epitaxy of air-stable monolayer superconducting films for quantum circuits and qubits
Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；Yale University（耶鲁大学）；Harvard University（哈佛大学）；Pohang University of Science and Technology（浦项科技大学）；New York University（纽约大学）
