Epitaxial aluminum layer on antimonide heterostructures for exploring Josephson junction effects

TL;DR

This paper reports the successful growth of high-quality epitaxial aluminum on antimonide heterostructures, demonstrating supercurrent in Josephson junctions, which advances quantum device research and applications.

Contribution

It introduces a method for epitaxially growing aluminum on antimonide heterostructures with high mobility, enabling exploration of Josephson effects in quantum technologies.

Findings

Sharp superconducting transition at ~1.3 K

Realization of supercurrent states in Josephson junctions

High mobility of epi-Al/antimonide heterostructures

Abstract

In this article, we present results of our recent work of epitaxially-grown aluminum (epi-Al) on antimonide heterostructures, where the epi-Al thin film is grown at either room temperature or below zero $^o$C. A sharp superconducting transition at $T \sim 1.3$ K is observed in these epi-Al films. We further show that supercurrent states are realized in Josephson junctions fabricated in the epi-Al/antimonide heterostructures with mobility $\mu \sim 1.0 \times 10^6$ cm$^2$/Vs. These results clearly demonstrate we have achieved growing high-quality epi-Al/antimonide heterostructures, a promising platform for the exploration of Josephson junction effects for quantum information science and microelectronics applications.