Haoxin Zhou, Eric Li, Kadircan Godeneli, Zi-Huai Zhang, Shahin Jahanbani, Kangdi Yu, Mutasem Odeh, Shaul Aloni, Sinéad Griffin, Alp Sipahigil
{"title":"Observation of Interface Piezoelectricity in Superconducting Devices on Silicon","authors":"Haoxin Zhou, Eric Li, Kadircan Godeneli, Zi-Huai Zhang, Shahin Jahanbani, Kangdi Yu, Mutasem Odeh, Shaul Aloni, Sinéad Griffin, Alp Sipahigil","doi":"arxiv-2409.10626","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The evolution of superconducting quantum processors is driven by the need to\nreduce errors and scale for fault-tolerant computation. Reducing physical qubit\nerror rates requires further advances in the microscopic modeling and control\nof decoherence mechanisms in superconducting qubits. Piezoelectric interactions\ncontribute to decoherence by mediating energy exchange between microwave\nphotons and acoustic phonons. Centrosymmetric materials like silicon and\nsapphire do not display piezoelectricity and are the preferred substrates for\nsuperconducting qubits. However, the broken centrosymmetry at material\ninterfaces may lead to piezoelectric losses in qubits. While this loss\nmechanism was predicted two decades ago, interface piezoelectricity has not\nbeen experimentally observed in superconducting devices. Here, we report the\nobservation of interface piezoelectricity at an aluminum-silicon junction and\nshow that it constitutes an important loss channel for superconducting devices.\nWe fabricate aluminum interdigital surface acoustic wave transducers on silicon\nand demonstrate piezoelectric transduction from room temperature to millikelvin\ntemperatures. We find an effective electromechanical coupling factor of\n$K^2\\approx 2 \\times 10^{-5}\\%$ comparable to weakly piezoelectric substrates.\nWe model the impact of the measured interface piezoelectric response on\nsuperconducting qubits and find that the piezoelectric surface loss channel\nlimits qubit quality factors to $Q\\sim10^4-10^8$ for designs with different\nsurface participation ratios and electromechanical mode matching. These results\nidentify electromechanical surface losses as a significant dissipation channel\nfor superconducting qubits, and show the need for heterostructure and phononic\nengineering to minimize errors in next-generation superconducting qubits.","PeriodicalId":501226,"journal":{"name":"arXiv - PHYS - Quantum Physics","volume":"197 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"arXiv - PHYS - Quantum Physics","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/arxiv-2409.10626","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The evolution of superconducting quantum processors is driven by the need to
reduce errors and scale for fault-tolerant computation. Reducing physical qubit
error rates requires further advances in the microscopic modeling and control
of decoherence mechanisms in superconducting qubits. Piezoelectric interactions
contribute to decoherence by mediating energy exchange between microwave
photons and acoustic phonons. Centrosymmetric materials like silicon and
sapphire do not display piezoelectricity and are the preferred substrates for
superconducting qubits. However, the broken centrosymmetry at material
interfaces may lead to piezoelectric losses in qubits. While this loss
mechanism was predicted two decades ago, interface piezoelectricity has not
been experimentally observed in superconducting devices. Here, we report the
observation of interface piezoelectricity at an aluminum-silicon junction and
show that it constitutes an important loss channel for superconducting devices.
We fabricate aluminum interdigital surface acoustic wave transducers on silicon
and demonstrate piezoelectric transduction from room temperature to millikelvin
temperatures. We find an effective electromechanical coupling factor of
$K^2\approx 2 \times 10^{-5}\%$ comparable to weakly piezoelectric substrates.
We model the impact of the measured interface piezoelectric response on
superconducting qubits and find that the piezoelectric surface loss channel
limits qubit quality factors to $Q\sim10^4-10^8$ for designs with different
surface participation ratios and electromechanical mode matching. These results
identify electromechanical surface losses as a significant dissipation channel
for superconducting qubits, and show the need for heterostructure and phononic
engineering to minimize errors in next-generation superconducting qubits.