Mutual and self-inductance in planarized multilayered superconductor integrated circuits: Microstrips, striplines, bends, meanders, ground plane perforations

TL;DR

This paper presents precise analytical models for mutual and self-inductance in multilayered superconducting integrated circuits, validated by experiments, with implications for circuit design and scalability.

Contribution

It introduces accurate analytical expressions for inductance in superconducting circuits, accounting for various geometries and effects, aiding design and calibration.

Findings

Mutual inductance decreases exponentially with distance between striplines.

Inductance depends strongly on magnetic field penetration depths.

Mutual inductance shows weak dependence on linewidth, affecting circuit scalability.

Abstract

Data are presented on mutual and self-inductance of various inductors used in multilayered superconductor integrated circuits: microstrips and striplines with widths of signal traces from 250 nm to a few micrometers, located on the same circuit layer at various distances from each other (from 250 nm to a few micrometers) and/or on different layers spaced vertically; effect of long slits in the ground plane(s) along the inductors on their mutual inductance; inductance of right-angled bends; inductance of meanders. Simple analytical expressions for mutual and self-inductance of the basic inductors are given, describing experimental data with accuracy better than 2% in a very wide range of parameters. They can be used for superconductor integrated circuit design and calibration of numerical inductance extractors. Measurements were done using circuits fabricated in fully planarized fabrication processes with eight niobium layers and Nb/Al-AlOx/Nb Josephson junctions, known as the SFQ5ee and SC1 processes developed at MIT Lincoln Laboratory for superconductor electronics. Mutual inductance decreases exponentially with distance between striplines and as a second power of the distance between microstrips, strongly depends on magnetic field penetration depths in superconducting ground planes, whereas superconducting properties of the signal traces are practically immaterial. Weak dependence of mutual inductance on the linewidth of superconducting wires indicates that area of superconducting flux transformers - the essential component of all digital circuits using ac power, superconducting qubits, and sensor arrays - scales poorly with the linewidth, putting a predictable upper limit on the integration scale of such circuits.