Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2024
Monday–Friday, March 4–8, 2024; Minneapolis & Virtual
Session S03: Characterizing Sources of Decoherence in Superconducting Qubits
8:00 AM–11:00 AM,
Thursday, March 7, 2024
Room: L100C
Sponsoring
Unit:
DMP
Chair: Akshay Murthy, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Abstract: S03.00010 : X-ray diffraction investigation of hydride precipitate structure in niobium thin films*
10:12 AM–10:24 AM
Presenter:
David A Garcia
(Northwestern University)
Authors:
David A Garcia
(Northwestern University)
Philip J Ryan
(Argonne National Laboratory)
Jong Woo Kim
(Argonne National Laboratory)
Dominic P Goronzy
(Northwestern University)
Roger J Reinertsen
(Northwestern University)
Mark C Hersam
(Northwestern University)
Michael J Bedzyk
(Northwestern University)
NbH precipitates have been well known to cause “Q-disease” in accelerator cavities and have recently been discovered in Nb planar superconducting qubits. [1] The NbH precipitation upon cooling causes dislocation scarring. Near-surface defects like these are believed to negatively affect superconducting qubit performance. However, whether NbH precipitates occur only near the surface or throughout the bulk is not well understood. The sub-surface structure is difficult to probe because of high H-interstitial mobility. Time of flight, secondary mass spectrometry experiments have located hydrogen preferentially near the film surface. However, transmission electron microscopy performed on the same samples has imaged vertical grains of NbH precipitates. Both techniques are destructive. While the NbH precipitates have previously been assumed to be vertical grains [2], simulations suggest that NbH should precipitate towards free surfaces. To probe the structure non-destructively, this study performed low-temperature, high-resolution, grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction at the APS 6-ID beamline to determine the NbH precipitate structure in molecular beam epitaxial Nb(110) films on a-Al2O3(110). NbH domains were identified near the surface and found to be tilted at discrete low angles with respect to the Nb single-crystal axial directions.
1. J. Lee, et al., arXiv:2108.10385 (2021).
2. S. Wagner, et al., ChemPhysChem, 20 (2019) 1890-1904.
*This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, National Quantum Information Science Research Centers, Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center (SQMS) under contract number DE-AC02-07CH11359
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