High temporal stability of niobium superconducting resonators by surface passivation with organophosphonate self-assembled monolayers

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that surface passivation of niobium superconducting resonators with organophosphonate self-assembled monolayers significantly enhances their temporal stability by suppressing oxide regrowth, thus reducing TLS losses.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel surface passivation technique using organophosphonate SAMs on niobium films, improving long-term stability of superconducting resonators.

Findings

SAM-passivated resonators maintained stable quality factors over six days.

Un-passivated resonators showed an ~80% increase in loss after air exposure.

TLS loss of the SAMs was quantified as approximately 5x10^-7.

Abstract

One main limiting factor towards achieving high coherence times in superconducting circuits is two level system (TLS) losses. Mitigating such losses requires controlling the formation of native oxides at the metal-air interface. Here, we report the growth of alkyl-phosphonate self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on Nb thin films following oxide removal. The impact of passivation was evaluated via the performance of coplanar waveguide resonators at 10mK, in terms of quality factor and resonant frequency, over six days of air exposure. Un-passivated resonators exhibited an ~80% increase in loss at single-photon power levels, whereas SAM-passivated resonators maintained excellent temporal stability, attributed to suppressed oxide regrowth. By employing a two-component TLS model, we discern distinct prominent loss channels for each resonator type and quantified the characteristic TLS loss of the SAMs to be ~5x10^-7. We anticipate our passivation methodology to offer a promising route toward industrial-scale qubit fabrication, particularly where long-term device stability is critical.