Thermal reconstruction as a method of substrate preparation for highly crystalline superconducting TiN resonators

Abstract

High quality crystalline growth of a thin film on sapphire requires sufficient substrate preparation, often achieved via the use of aggressive chemical cleaning. Direct thermal reconstruction of the sapphire substrate via a CO$_2$ laser beam may allow for an alternative way to prepare the substrate for epitaxy without the use of any chemical processing. Within this work, we demonstrate that thermal annealing of sapphire into its ($\sqrt{31}$$\times$$\sqrt{31}$)$R$$\pm$9° reconstruction is a valid alternative preparation technique for sapphire substrates. TiN films grown via plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy upon these substrates exhibit greater crystallinity than those grown on chemically cleaned sapphire substrates. Superconducting resonators fabricated from these films exhibit similar performance, with many possessing internal quality factors at single photon levels greater than 10$^6$ for both substrate preparation methods.