Sputtered NbN Films for Ultrahigh Performance Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detectors
Abstract
Nowadays ultrahigh performance superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors are the key elements in a variety of devices from biological research to quantum communications and computing. Accurate tuning of superconducting material properties is a powerful resource for fabricating single-photon detectors with a desired properties. Here, we report on the major theoretical relations between ultrathin niobium nitride (NbN) films properties and superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors characteristics, as well as ultrathin NbN films properties dependence on reactive magnetron sputtering recipes. Based on this study we formulate the exact requirements to ultrathin NbN films for ultrahigh performance superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors. Then, we experimentally study ultrathin NbN films properties (morphology, crystalline structure, critical temperature, sheet resistance) on silicon, sapphire, silicon dioxide and silicon nitride substrates sputtered with various recipes. We demonstrate ultrathin NbN films (obtained with more than 100 films deposition) with a wide range of critical temperature from 2.5 to 12.1 K and sheet resistance from 285 to 2000 ~/sq, as well as investigate a sheet resistance evolution over for more than 40\% within two years. Finally, we found out that one should use ultrathin NbN films with specific critical temperature near 9 K and sheet resistance of 400 ~/sq for ultrahigh performance SNSPD.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2311.17000,
title = {Sputtered NbN Films for Ultrahigh Performance Superconducting Nanowire Single-Photon Detectors},
author = {Ilya A. Stepanov and Aleksandr S. Baburin and Danil V. Kushnev and Evgeniy V. Sergeev and Oksana I. Shmonina and Aleksey R. Matanin and Vladimir V. Echeistov and Ilya A. Ryzhikov and Yuri V. Panfilov and Ilya A. Rodionov},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2311.17000},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
The following article has been submitted to APL Materials. After it is published, it will be found at https://pubs.aip.org/aip/apm. Copyright 2023 Author(s). This article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) License