Hydrogen plasma-assisted atomic layer epitaxy of superconducting titanium nitride

Abstract

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) offers precise, conformal control of thin-film growth and is a workhorse for semiconductor manufacturing, but its use in superconducting quantum circuits is constrained by the need to simultaneously control crystallinity, stoichiometry and interfacial disorder at cryogenic temperatures. Here we develop hydrogen plasma assisted ALD to epitaxially grow superconducting titanium nitride (TiN) thin films, using a hydrogen plasma step to modify the surface chemistry to suppress precursor-derived impurities during each deposition cycle. Synchrotron X-ray scattering reveals semi-coherent epitaxy of TiN on c-plane sapphire, with discrete crystallographic domains and minimal long-range structural disorder. Complementary X-ray spectroscopy and neutron reflectometry show negligible oxygen-related disorder throughout the film and no substantial hydrogen incorporation. The resulting TiN films exhibit a superconducting transition at 2.2 K, a kinetic inductance of 15 pH/sq and a superconducting coherence length of 14.6 nm, comparable to the measured crystal coherence length. These results establish hydrogen plasma assisted ALD as a route to structurally ordered superconducting TiN thin film epitaxy and demonstrate that the nanoscale control of ALD can be extended to materials suitable for cryogenic quantum technologies.