Towards practical quantum computers: transmon qubit with a lifetime approaching 0.5 milliseconds

Here we report a breakthrough in the fabrication of a long lifetime transmon qubit. We use tantalum films as the base superconductor. By using a dry etching process, we obtained transmon qubits with a best T1 lifetime of 503 μs. As a comparison, we also fabricated transmon qubits with other popular materials, including niobium and aluminum, under the same design and fabrication processes. After characterizing their coherence properties, we found that qubits prepared with tantalum films have the best performance. Since the dry etching process is stable and highly anisotropic, it is much more suitable for fabricating complex scalable quantum circuits, when compared to wet etching. As a result, the current breakthrough indicates that the dry etching process of tantalum film is a promising approach to fabricate medium- or large-scale superconducting quantum circuits with a much longer lifetime, meeting the requirements for building practical quantum computers.

The Microfabricated Alkali Vapor Cell with High Hermeticity for Chip-Scale Atomic Clock

Herein, a microfabricated millimeter-level vapor alkali cell with a high hermeticity is fabricated through a wet etching and single-chip anodic bonding process. The vapor cell, containing Rb and N2, was investigated in a coherent population trapping (CPT) setup for the application of a chip-scale atomic clock (CSAC). The contrast of CPT resonance is up to 1.1% within the only 1 mm length of light interacting with atom. The effects of some critical external parameters on the CPT resonance, such as laser intensity, cell temperature, and buffer gas pressure, are thoroughly studied and optimized. The improved microfabricated vapor cell also exhibited great potential for other chip-scale atomic devices.

Wet Etching in β-Ga2O3 Bulk Single Crystal

Beta-phase gallium oxide (β-Ga2O3) bulk single crystal has received increasing attentions due to their fantastic performances and widespread use in power devices and solar-blind photodetectors. Wet etching has proved to...

Delamination of polyimide in hydrofluoric acid

Wet etching is a critical fabrication step for the mass production of micro and nanoelectronic devices. However, when an extremely corrosive acid such as hydrofluoric (HF) acid are used during etching, an undesirable damage might occur if the device includes a material that is not compatible with the acid. Polyimide thin films can serve as sacrificial/structural layers to fabricate freestanding or flexible devices. The importance of polyimide in microelectronics is due to its relatively low stress and compatibility with standard micromachining processes. In this work, a fast delamination process of a 4-μm-thin film of polyimide from a silicon substrate has been demonstrated. The films’ detachment has been performed using a wet-based etchant of HF acid. Specifically, the effect of HF concentration on the delamination time required to detach the polyimide film from the substrate has been investigated. This study is intended to provide the information on the compatibility of using polyimide films with HF, which can help in the design and fabrication of polyimide-based devices.