Advanced Fabrication Processes for Superconducting Very Large Scale Integrated Circuits
Abstract
We review the salient features of two advanced nodes of an 8-Nb-layer fully planarized process developed recently at MIT Lincoln Laboratory for fabricating single flux quantum (SFQ) digital circuits with very large-scale integration on 200-mm wafers: the SFQ4ee and SFQ5ee nodes, where ee denotes that the process is tuned for energy-efficient SFQ circuits. The former has eight superconducting layers with 0.5-m minimum feature size and a 2-/sq Mo layer for circuit resistors. The latter has nine superconducting layers: eight Nb wiring layers with the minimum feature size of 350 nm and a thin superconducting MoN x layer (T c ~ 7.5 K) with high kinetic inductance (about 8 pH/sq) for forming compact inductors. A nonsuperconducting (T c <; 2 K) MoN x layer with lower nitrogen content is used for 6-/sq planar resistors for shunting and biasing of Josephson junctions (JJs). Another resistive layer is added to form interlayer sandwich-type resistors of milliohm range for releasing unwanted flux quanta from superconducting loops of logic cells. Both process nodes use Au/Pt/Ti contact metallization for chip packaging. The technology utilizes one layer of Nb/AlO x -Al/Nb JJs with critical current density J c of 100 A/m 2 and minimum diameter of 700 nm. Circuit patterns are defined by 248-nm photolithography and high-density plasma etching. All circuit layers are fully planarized using chemical mechanical planarization of SiO 2 interlayer dielectric. The following results and topics are presented and discussed: the effect of surface topography under the JJs on the their properties and repeatability, I c and J c targeting, effect of hydrogen dissolved in Nb, MoN x properties for the resistor layer and for high-kinetic-inductance layer, and technology of milliohm-range resistors.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 19, 2016
- Accession Number
- AD1034542
Entities
People
- Alexander N. Wynn
- D.E. Oates
- Leonard M. Johnson
- Mark A. Gouker
- Sergey K. Tolpygo
- Terence J. Weir
- Vladimir Bolkhovsky
Organizations
- MIT Lincoln Laboratory