I130 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. I I , NO.

I , MARCH 2001

Fabrication and Characterization of SNS Josephson

Junctions with an Aluminum Barrier
Vincenzo Lacquaniti, Sabino Maggi, Albino Polcari, Raffaella Steni, and Domenico Andreone

Abstract- We report the current status of our SNS tech- to allow sufficient noise immunity [I].
nology aimed at the development of programmable voltage Several main kinds of these devices are currently un-
standard devices. Using the simple Nb/Al/Nb trilayer pro-
cess, with an A1 barrier thickness of the order of 100 nm, der investigation: superconducting/normal metal/super-
we have fabricated SNS Josephson junctions whose electri- conducting (SNS) junctions [2], hysteretic SIS junctions
cal properties can be changed by varying the morphology with an external shunt [3], SINIS junctions, i.e., junctions
of the A1 film. The major role in determining the electrical
behavior of the junctions is played by the roughness of the
with a normal metal film between two insulating layers
thick AI barrier. AFM analysis shows that the AI roughness [4].Another approach is based on RSFQ logic, which uses
is strongly reduced by increasing its deposition rate. The conventional SIS technology but needs very complex super-
critical current density varies by two orders of magnitude, conducting circuits [ 5 ] .
from lo3 A/cmZ up to LO5 A/cm2, with correspondingly nor-
mal resistances from 1 R down t o few m a . The magnetic Each of these technologies seems more suited for a spe-
field dependence of the critical current is also affected by cific application. For instance, ac waveform synthesis with
the barrier structure, while all the junctions show regular high voltage resolution can be achieved by using SNS junc-
Shapiro-like rf-induced steps at 70 GHz.
tions of low barrier resistivity, while a potentiometer for
Keuwords- Josephson junctions, superconducting de- voltages up to 1, or possibly 10 V with lower resolution,
vices, cryogenic electronics, thin film devices.
needs junctions with higher resistivity, such as SINIS or
shunted SIS junctions. Efforts are being made in sev-
I. INTRODUCTION eral laboratories worldwide to optimize the properties of
these different junction technologies. A detailed review of
I N 1969, the establishmcnt of a quantum voltage stan-
dard, based on the relation of the voltage to the unit of
time through the proportionality constant 2e/h, was one
the present
voltage
status of research related to the programmable
standard is in [SI.
of the first practical applications of the Josephson effect. Our research has focused on Nb/Al/Nb SNS junctions,
However, only in the sccond half of the 80’s, the develop- which are a simple derivation of the well known Nb/Al-
ment of the reliable Nb/Al-AlO,/Nb fabrication process AlO,/Nb SIS junction technology. The use of A1 for the
made it possible to reach quantized voltages of 1 and 10 normal metal barrier has not been considered previously
V, suitable for direct dc voltage calibration. These de- because of the very high conductivity of A1 film at the
vices wcre based on large series arrays of thousands of SIS thickness usually used for the conventional SIS junctions.
Josephson junctions (here SIS stands for superconductor- However, by increasing the A1 thickness up to 100 nm,
insulator-superconductor, where Nb is the superconducting we obtain almost reasonable values of the critical current
film and the Al0, layer is the insulating tunneling barrier density, which are nevertheless still one order of magnitude
of the junction). larger than in SIS devices [7]. A corresponding reduction of
the junction size to about 1 pm is then necessary, in order
These voltage standard devices, based on the zero-
to have critical currents in the range of a few mA. This is a
crossing current steps of underdamped, hysteretic junc-
limiting factor in our current junction technology. Yet, in
tions, have two main disadvantages: (a) the quantized volt-
the future, the small junction size could be a further reason
age cannot be changed quickly and (b) the junctions do not
have a sufficient noise immunity and show random transi- for using this kind of junction because it could permit the
integration of a very large number of junctions into a small
tions among the adjacent quantized voltages. These disad-
chip area.
vantages, while not relevant for dc voltage calibration, limit
the use of these arrays for applications such as D/A and We have found that the electrical properties of the junc-
,4/D conversion and for accurate ac waveform synthesis. tions are strongly dependent on the morphology of the
rather thick A1 metal barrier, which in turn depends on the
Therefore, an ac Josephson voltage standard requires
deposition rate of the film. We have studied the AI mor-
the use of overdamped, non-hysteretic junctions, having
phology using atomic force microscopy (AFM). Our main
a single-valued I - V characteristic, to allow a fast and
result is that at a low A1 deposition rate, the 100 nm thick
univocal selection of the voltage level. Further, the ampli-
A1 film loses its planarizing properties and becomes very
tude of the rf-induced current steps must be large enough
rough, which worsens the electrical behavior of the junc-
Manuscript received September 18, 2000. This work was supported tions. Increasing the A1 deposition rate, we observe a clear
by the European Union project ProVolt no. EU SMT4-CT98-2239. reduction of the A1 roughriess arid then a strong improve-
T h e authors are all with Istituto Elettrotecnico Nazionale ”Galileo ment of the electrical properties of the devices. This indi-
Ferraris”, ‘Forino, 1-10135 Italy.
Contact author: V. Lacquaniti, telephone: +39-011-3919 434, e- cates that it is possible to change, in a simple and repeat-
mail: 1acquaniQien.it. able way, the interface between the superconducting elec-

1051-8223/01$10.00 0 2001 IEEE

 I131

trodes, obtaining junctions with either low or high ICRN 400 I I

values.

11. SAMPLE
FABRICATION
The fabrication process of the Nb/Al/Nb junctions is a
derivation of the basic process for the Nb-based SIS junc-
tions. The three metal films are sequentially deposited in
an rf sputtering system at an Ar pressure of 5 x lop3 mbar.
The base pressure of the system is about lop7 mbar. The
thickness of the base Nb layer is 150 nm and it is deposited
at a rate of 1 nm/s. The Nb counterelectrode is deposited
at the same rate, but its thickness is usually 50 nm. We
have also fabricated samples with Nb electrodes of the same
thickness (150 nm), finding no significant difference in their
electrical behavior with respect to the usual samples. - 4 0 0 t ' -200 -100 0 100 200
The thickness and the deposition rate of the A1 barrier Voltage (pV)
has been varied in order to modify the properties of the
junctions. The thickncss has been ranged between 5 and
100 nm - although the present work is focused on 100 nm- Fig. 1. I - V curve of a 5 x 5 p m 2 SNS junction fabricated a t an AI
deposition rate of 0.5 nm/s (Table I), irradiated at 70 GHz. T h e
thick barriers - while the rate ranged between 0.5 and n = +1/2 and n = f 3 / 2 steps are clearly visible.
5 nm/s. The Nb wiring layer, 350 - 500 nm thick, has
been deposited using the same parameters of the other Nb
electrodes. of samples fabricated both at IEN and a.t PTB.
The base electrode and the wiring layer geometries are Samples fabricated using 100 nm-thick A1 barriers de-
defined by lift-off. To define the junction area we have used posited at 0.5 nm/s have a critical current density Jc of
RIE to pattern the top Nb film, while A1 was chemically the order of l o 3 A/cm2, while their normal resistance RN
etched in a diluted solution of orthophosporic and nitric is in the range of 0.3 - 1 R, giving ICRN = 400 - 1000
acid. This prevents the possibility of patterning junctions pV. These values of I C R N are very high for SNS junctions,
with sizes smaller than 2 - 3 pm, therefore a process to mainly because of the very high R N , and cannot be fully
reactively-etch the A1 barrier has been planned for the next explained by interdiffusion of the A1 and the top Nb films
future. The area of the junctions used in this work ranged [7], [8]. These junctions also show a very weak sensitivity
between 25 and 100 pm2. Insulation of the junction struc- to an external magnetic field B up to 50 G. On the other
ture is accomplished by liquid anodization at 20 V followed hand, irradiating the junctions with an rf source at f = 70
by thermal evaporation of a 300 nm SiO, film. GHz, regular integer as well as semi-integer Shapiro steps
Since our present sputtering system has a relatively high appear (Fig. 1). The semi-integer steps are correlated to
base pressure (of the order of l o p 7 mbar), we have checked subharmonic modes [9].
our results by fabricating several Nb/Al/Nb junctions at When the A1 thickness is reduced to 75 nm, at the same
P T B , Germany, in an uhv dc sputtering system having deposition rate, the critical current density increases by
a base pressure of l o p g mbar. In fact, with SNS junc- one order of magnitude with respect to the 100 nm-thick
tions based on metallic barriers, even a weak contamina- junctions.
tion could lead to unreliable results, related to the forma- Increasing the deposition rate to 2 nm/s, a completely
tion of unexpected oxide surfaces. At P T B we have either different situation is observed: the critical current den-
made only the Nb/Al/Nb trilayer (completing the fabrica- sity raises up to lo5 A/cm2, while the normal resistance
tion process in our laboratory) or the complete fabrication strongly decreases down to 1 - 10 m a . Hence, I ~ R N be-
process and also the electrical characterization of the sam- comes less than 300 p V .
ples. However, we have nevcr found any difference in the
electrical behavior of the samples made in our laboratory TABLE I
when compared to those fabricated at PTB [lo]. E L E C T R I C A L PARAMETERS FOR N B / A L / N B JUNCTIONS WITH 100 NM
AL BARRIERS
RESULTS
111. EXPERIMENTAL
A1 rate Area IC Jc RN ICRN
A . Dc and rf Characterization (nm/s) (pm2) (mA) (10" A/cm2) (mn) (pV)
0.5 5x 5 1.0 4 1000 1000
The Nb/Al/Nb junctions have been electrically charac- 0.5 5 x 10 1.4 2.8 500 700
terized in dc and rf at 4.2 IC. As noted above, the electrical 0.5 10 x 10 1.5 1.5 600 900
properties strongly depend on the A1 deposition rate. A 2.0 5x 5 25 100 10 250
2.0 5 x 10 35 70 2 70
summary of the measured electrical parameters for several
5.0 5x 5 40 160 2.5 100
junctions of different area and A1 deposition rate is shown
in Table I. These data are representative of a very large set
 1132

TABLE I1
25 3 MAIN A F M PARAMETERS FOR THE NB/AL/NB TRILAYERS

A1 rate Rms roughness Peak-peak height

( 4 s ) (nm) (nm)
0.5 10.83 90.88
1.0 9.09 66.94
2.0 6.63 51.85
S
c- 5.0 5.59 51.13
E
3
0
-5-
-10 - been done on samples deposited in the same run of the
junctions which have been electrically characterized. The
-15 - Nb/A1 bilayers have been fabricated in separate runs, using
-20 - the same parameters of the complete junctions.
-25 8
-60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60
Table I1 shows the rms roughness and the peak-peak
height (i.e., the height difference between the highest and
lowest pixel of the AFM scan) of the top Nb surface in
Magnetic field, 5 (G) the Nb/Al/Nh samples, made using different A1 deposition
rates and with an A1 thickness of 100 nm. The AFM imagc
Fig. 2. Magnetic field deprndencc of the critical current of a 1 0 x 5 of the top Nb film of two samples made at low and high A1
kLm2 SNS junction fabricatcd with an AI rate of 2 nm/s. The deposition rate is shown in Fig. 3.
solid and the open circles arc the values of thc ( 0 ) critical current
and of the ( 0 ) return current, respcctively. T h e magnetic field The quality of the A1 surface affects the top Nb film. In
13 is perpendicular to the junction length, I, = 10 pm. The fact, the AFM measurements show that the roughness of
norrnalized lcngth of thc junction is L/X, = 3 . the top Nb film - always much higher than that of A1 -
improves whcn deposited onto the A1 layer made at, higher
rate. In other words, the AFM measurement of the top
By applying a magnctic field, the critical current mod- Nb surface is qualitatively, although not quantitatively, in-
ulates as typical for an intermediate-length junction, as dicative of the structure of the A1 barrier.
shown in Fig. 2 for a 10 x 5 pni2 junction. Here the mag- In any case the results show that: (a) an increase of the
netic field is nornial t o the length L = 10 pm of thc junc- thickness of the A1 film up to 100 nm strongly increases
tion and the junction normalized length is L / X j = 3. This its surface roughness and grain size; (b) at constant A1
junction shows a slight hysteresis at zero magnetic field, thickness, an increase of the dcposition rate of A1 reduces
however the I - V curve is perfectly symmetrical along the both the surface roughness and the grain size (Table 11).
voltage axis. By applying an external field, the amount of The first observation is riot in contrast with the well known
hysteresis and the asymmetry of the I - V curve changes planarizing propertics of All because planarization occiirs
with the field, as shown in Fig. 2, where we have plotted only at low A1 thickness (5 - 10 nm), as in the conventional
the critical current (solid circles) and the rcturn current, Nb/Al-AlO,/Nb SIS junctions.
i.e., the value of the current corresponding to the return of Varying these two parameters, it is then possible to mod-
the junction to thc zero-voltage state (open circles). ify the interface between the A1 barrier and the top Nb film,
Increasing further the deposition rate to 5 nni/s, the crit- switching from an highly-perturbed surface, characterized
ical current density increases slightly, while the normal re- by a very high roughness and grain size, t o a nearly flat
sistance reduces to a few mR, resulting in a smaller I ~ I R Nsurface with reduced roughness and smaller grains [lo].
product between 20 and 200 p V .
It is worth to concludc this section by noting that, since IV. DISCUSSION
the critical current at an A1 deposition rate of 2 and even
As noted above, the morphology of a thick A1 barrier
more 5 nm/s is very high, of the order of tens of mA (Ta-
appears to be completely different from that of thin A1
ble I), it is rather difficult to study the electrical behavior
films used in SIS junctions and depends on the deposition
of these junctions, because the critical currents and the
rate of Al. Therefore, also the electrical properties of the
resistive branch of the I - V curve are often hidden by
junctions are a function of the A1 deposition rate (Table I).
transitions of the films to the nornial state. This implics
At a low deposition rate (0.5 nm/s), RN is very high, 1 N
that, with these A1 deposition rates, it would be necessary
to use smaller junction sizes, of the order of 1- 2 pm, which
R,close t o values typical of SIS tunnel junctions. Also, the
resistivity of the barrier P N ,as inferred from RN and the
is limited by our prescnt optical photolithography.
nominal junction area, appears t o be too high, indicative
of a possible non-metallic barrier.
B. Structural Analgsis
A first explanation is that a very small amount of oxygen
A detailed structural analysis of the base-Nb/Al bilay- could be present during the deposition of the trilayer, form-
ers and of the whole Nb/Al/Nb trilayers has been carried ing unexpected insulating layers. To test this hypothesis,
out with AFM. For the trilayers, the measurements have as noted above, we have reproduced our fabrication process

k’ig. 3 . APM images of 1 x 1 p m 2 aieas of Nb/Al/Nb samples
fabricated a t two dilferent A1 deposition rates: (a) AI deposition
rate = 0.5 nm/5 (b) AI deposition rate = 5 nm/s. The peak-pcak
height of the AFM scan is (a) 90.9 n m , (b) 51.1 nm.
in an uhv sputtering system at PTB, finding no meaningful
difference in the electrical properties of these samples with
respect to those made in our sputtering system.
The electrical and structural data presented in the pre-
vious scctions suggest, anothcr interpretation. In the case
of A1 dcposited at 5 nm/s, resulting in the smoother sur-
face of Fig. 3(b), the junction effective area can be consid-
ered equal to the nominal area defined by photolithography.
On the other hand, when A1 is deposited at 0.5 nm/s, the
highly perturbed surface [Fig. 3(a)] prevents the formation
of a good contact area and, instead of a single junction
of several pm2, what we actually measure is the response
of scvcral smaller submicron size junctions connected in a
randoni parallel array. Hence the effective junction area
is much less than thc nominal area, thus giving p~ in the
correct range for a truly metallic barricr. This simple pic-
ture also explains why, while a Shapiro-like rf response is
present, no magnetic field dcpendence is observed as in the
case of point-contact junctions. A similar magnetic field
behavior has been observed in high-TC SNS edge junctions
having a very non-uniform current distribution [ 111.
Thcn, it might be possible to fabricate differcnt kinds of
junctions by changing only the A1 deposition rate: (a)junc-
tions with smooth, non-perturbed interfaces with high cur-
rent densities and low normal resistances (IC RN = 20 - 100
pV and areas of 1 pm2 or possibly cven less). These
could give highly intcgrated devices for a next genera-
tion of programmable voltage standard, (b) junctions with
rough, highly-perturbed interfaces, forming random arrays
of point-contact-like junctions, which show no magnetic
I133
field response and have a very high ICRN product of tho
order of 1 mV. Thcse dcvices could be useful to strongly
reduce the number of junctions in arrays for the quantum
voltmeters, but seem in any case interesting also for dif-
ferent applications such as radiation detcctors or RFSQ
circuits.
V. CONCLUSIONS
Nb/Al/Nb SNS junctions have been fabricated and char-
acterized both from the electrical and structural point of
view. Starting from the simple Nb/A1 trilayer process, we
have fabricated SNS junctions where the electrical prop-
erties can bc varicd by changing the A1 film morphology
during the dcposition.
It is possible in this way t o change the cffective junction
area with rcspect to the nominal valuc defiricd by photoli-
tography. In the extrcme case of a vcry rough A1 barrier,
thc effective area is very small and the junction behaves
like a point-contact. The optimal conditions for ensuring
uniform and reproducible current and resistance values are
under invcstigation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We wish to thank Dr. .J. Niemayer, PTB, Germany, for
kind cooperation and fruitful discussions, Dr. R. Gorinclli
for the AFM measurcrnents and R. Rocci for his skilled
technical support.
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