English

Tuning supercurrent in Josephson field effect transistors using h-BN dielectric

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2021-03-29 v2

Abstract

The transparent interface in epitaxial Al-InAs heterostructures provides an excellent platform for potential advances in mesoscopic and topological superconductivity. Semiconductor-based Josephson Junction Field Effect Transistors (JJ-FETs) fabricated on these heterostructures have a metallic gate that tunes the supercurrent. Here we report the fabrication and measurement of gate-tunable Al-InAs JJ-FETs in which the gate dielectric in contact with the InAs is produced by mechanically exfoliated hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) followed by dry transfer using a van der Waals-mediated pick up process. We discuss the fabrication process that enables compatibility between layered material transfer and Al-InAs heterostructures to avoid chemical reactions and unintentional doping that could affect the characteristics of the JJ-FET. We achieve full gate-tunablity of supercurrent by using only 5~nm thick h-BN flakes. We contrast our process with devices fabricated using a conventional AlOx_{\rm x} gate dielectric and show that h-BN could be an excellent competing dielectric for JJ-FET devices. We observe that the product of normal resistance and critical current, Ic_{\rm c}Rn_{\rm n}, is comparable for both types of devices, but strikingly higher Rn_{\rm n} for the h-BN-based devices indicating that the surface is doped less compared to AlOx_{\rm x} gate dielectric.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2007.12202,
  title  = {Tuning supercurrent in Josephson field effect transistors using h-BN dielectric},
  author = {Fatemeh Barati and Josh P. Thompson and Matthieu C. Dartiailh and Kasra Sardashti and William Mayer and Joseph Yuan and Kaushini Wickramasinghe and K. Watanabe and T. Taniguchi and Hugh Churchill and Javad Shabani},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.12202},
  year   = {2021}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T17:21:33.736Z