Candidate
Julie Tournet
Title
Growth and Characterization of Epitaxial Al Layers on GaAs and Si Substrates for Superconducting CPW Resonators in Scalable Quantum Computing Systems
Supervisor
Zbigniew Wasilewski
Abstract
The growth of Aluminum (Al) on semiconductors and dielectrics is the cornerstone of the quest for scalable quantum computing systems. Indeed the electrical properties of Al make it an exceptional candidate to the realization of superconducting resonators, pivotal tools for understanding and operating superconducting qubits. Such resonators have been fabricated recently on Sapphire substrates, using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), and displayed quality factors above a million. Complementary studies of these resonators have demonstrated that the metal-substrate interface was the primary source of decoherence and losses, highlighting the importance of pristine interfaces (free of contaminants), and high quality epitaxial growth in order to minimize the native defects level. In this work, we investigate different substrate materials in order to yield equivalent or higher quality factor resonators. Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) and Silicon (Si) were selected for their good dielectric properties, well-established processing techniques and a potential on-chip integration. After a thermal substrate anneal, and in some cases a buffer structure deposition, Al was grown on both substrates at low temperature, using MBE. In view of the extreme sensitivity of the resulting Al crystal orientation to the initial surface conditions, different starting surface reconstructions were also investigated. Growth evolution was studied with reflection high energy electron diffraction simultaneously at several azimuths during deposition on rotating substrates. The substrate temperature, the system background pressure and possible sources of contamination were monitored carefully to ensure the reproducibility of the results. Resulting layers were subsequently characterized with X-ray diffraction (XRD) to confi rm their epitaxial nature and crystallographic orientation. Finally, atomic force microscopy was used to assess the layers morphology. Different growth modes were observed depending on the material: Al grew in a Stranski-Krastanov mode on GaAs(001) surfaces, in a Frank-van-der-Merwe mode on Si(111) surfaces and in a Volmer-Weber mode on Si(001) surfaces. All yielded crystalline structures. Targeting atomically smooth single crystalline materials, best results were obtained for Al(110) deposited on GaAs(001)-??? (2x4) substrates with layer surfaces showing root mean square (RMS) roughness of 0.552nm. While the epitaxy on Si(111)-??? ("1x1") led to single-crystalline Al(111) layers with a RMS roughness of only 0.487nm, a detailed XRD study indicated a possible misalignment of the crystallites that could induce defects in the material.