Epitaxial Growth of Ultra-smooth $δ$-NbN Thin Films on TiN-Buffered Sapphire by Room-Temperature Sputtering

Abstract

The $δ$ phase of Niobium Nitride (NbN) is a promising superconducting material, which is chemically stable and shares lattice compatibility with conventional III-Nitride semiconductors. Due to a high critical temperature (T$_{c}$) and a high critical (magnetic) field (H$_{c}$), NbN is much-coveted for a diverse set of applications spanning from single photon detectors, and hot-electron bolometers to quantum computing architectures using superconducting circuits. However, synthesizing high-quality epitaxial films of phase pure and stoichiometric $δ$-NbN in a cost-effective manner, is challenging. In this study, we investigate the epitaxial growth of single crystalline $δ$-NbN on TiN-buffered c-sapphire (Al$_{2}$O$_{3}$) substrates by sputtering at room temperature. For these films, we demonstrate a surface-roughness in picometer-scale, the lowest reported till date. The critical temperature (T$_{c}$) of the epitaxial $δ$-NbN films was observed to decrease with the insertion of the TiN buffer layer, tentatively attributable to the leakage of Cooper pairs, due to the proximity effect. TiN and NbN layer behave as a bilayer system, wherein Cooper-pair leakage is facilitated by the absence of any oxide interlayer. Consequently, T$_{c}$ reduces with increasing thickness of the TiN layer.