Controlled Growth of Ta Oxide With Reactive Sputtering for Josephson Junction Applications

Josephson junctions (JJs) are indispensable elements for superconducting quantum electronics. There is a growing need to develop processes for high quality JJs. Here we explore the growth of Ta oxide as a dielectric barrier for Metal-Oxide-Metal JJ implementations. We study films of Ta oxides prepared with reactive magnetron sputtering. TaOx is grown on silicon and Ta films with varying RF power and oxygen concentrations. Tuning these parameters allows us to control the rate of deposition as well as composition of polycrystalline Ta oxides needed to meet our dielectric requirements for Josephson Junctions.