Novel materials and fabrication for superconducting quantum devices

Superconducting quantum hardware has the potential to form the basis of the first useful quantum information processor. Much of the progress on improving performance at the device level has been based on a relatively small basis set of materials and fabrication methods. In this talk, I will present our approaches and insights based on novel materials and fabrication methods that aim to expand this basis set. To this end, we have repurposed a magnetically contaminated sputter chamber to produce niobium thin films that achieved quality factors over one million in narrow-gap coplanar waveguide resonators. Separately, we have been exploring highly crystalline nitride materials and heterostructures. I will report on our investigations using these synthesis tools, as well as other novel fabrication methods, for the superconducting qubit architecture.