{"id":645266,"date":"2026-08-19T10:35:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T10:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/645266\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T10:35:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T10:35:13","slug":"new-tantalum-process-could-ease-manufacturing-of-superconducting-quantum-chips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/645266\/","title":{"rendered":"New Tantalum Process Could Ease Manufacturing of Superconducting Quantum Chips"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Insider Brief<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Cornell researchers developed a krypton-based sputtering process that deposits high-quality superconducting tantalum films on silicon at 200 degrees Celsius, potentially making the material easier to integrate into commercial quantum-chip fabrication. <\/li>\n<li>The method cuts the typical tantalum deposition temperature by about half while producing thin films with substantially higher electronic conductivity and high-quality qubits. <\/li>\n<li>The researchers said the lower-temperature process provides a wider manufacturing window for semiconductor fabrication and could help address materials and nanofabrication challenges facing superconducting quantum computing.<\/li>\n<li>Image: A team led by Valla Fatemi, assistant professor in the School of Applied and Engineering Physics in Duffield Engineering, developed a method that uses krypton gas to slash the deposition temperature of the corrosion-resistant metal tantalum, resulting in thin films that have substantially higher electronic conductivity. (Bridget Reinsko\/Provided)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">PRESS RELEASE \u2014 To commercialize quantum computing, manufacturers need high-quality superconducting materials for microchips, but they also require a reliable, sustainable nanofabrication process.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tantalum is a corrosion-resistant metal that meets the first criteria but not the second. That\u2019s because it has to be deposited on a substrate at temperatures that typically exceed 400 degrees Celsius \u2013 too hot for many semiconductor foundries\u2019 current tools.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cornell researchers have developed a method that uses krypton gas to slash that deposition temperature to 200 degrees while depositing on silicon, a standard high-quality substrate. The process resulted in thin films that also have substantially higher electronic conductivity.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cTantalum as a material has been shown to be very exciting from a device performance perspective, but its manufacturability had some question marks because of integration challenges such as required process temperatures,\u201d said\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.duffield.cornell.edu\/people\/valla-fatemi\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Valla Fatemi<\/a>, assistant professor and Aref and Manon Lahham Faculty Fellow in the Cornell Duffield College of Engineering, who led the project. \u201cWe figured out a relatively simple change, by using some physical and materials insights, to bring that temperature down into a zone that is translatable to nanofabrication systems in industry, while showing that in our academic context we can have leading-edge performance of these devices.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41563-026-02718-z\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The findings published Aug. 18\u00a0<\/a>in Nature Materials. The study\u2019s lead author is postdoctoral researcher Maciej Olszewski, Ph.D. \u201926\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Quantum computing promises to handle faster, more complex computations by leveraging the unique quantum mechanical properties of superconductors, which carry current with little to no energy loss. The basic building blocks of the hardware are quantum bits, or qubits, which can store and process massive quantities of information. But correctly combining high-performance materials and nanofabrication techniques has proved to be one of the primary bottlenecks slowing the technology\u2019s commercial development.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fatemilab.aep.cornell.edu\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Fatemi\u2019s lab explores<\/a>\u00a0the intersection of experimental condensed matter physics and quantum devices. Recently, his team developed the characterization and nanofabrication methods to achieve high-end performance for niobium-based materials.\u00a0In that work, niobium was bombarded with ions of the noble gas argon, which knocked off nobium\u2019s atoms so they deposited on a substrate \u2013 a process called sputtering \u2013 forming a thin film.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThat work got the ball rolling for us in understanding a lot of the surface science and how that correlates with improving performance,\u201d Fatemi said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The researchers swapped niobium for tantalum, a transition metal with more stable surface properties and high resistance to corrosion \u2013 and a leading material for many superconducting components. But tantalum is not without challenges. When deposited at lower temperatures, the material is in a crystal phase with undesirable properties. That problem that can only be remedied by heating it more than 400 degrees Celsius for deposition or by seeding the surface with other materials to alter its performance. At the same time, if tantalum gets too hot, it can mix with the silicon substrate and form a thick layer that leads to information loss and lowers the chip\u2019s performance.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The new solution: Olszewski hypothesized that using krypton as the ionized gas instead of argon would transfer more momentum and kick off the tantalum atoms with greater energy, thereby stabilizing the targeted crystal phase on the silicon substrate \u2013 all at a much lower temperature.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThere\u2019s this whole set of tooling and fabrication lines that don\u2019t really go above 400 Celsius, and they\u2019re built for that. And tantalum on silicon, when you use the old method, was right on the border of that,\u201d Olszewski said. \u201cThere was little margin to do things reliably. Using krypton brought that threshold down to 200 Celsius. So you now have this big window to be able to do reliable fabrication.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A crucial final step of the process: adding\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/news.cornell.edu\/stories\/2021\/12\/collaboration-gets-quantum-view-superconductor-junction\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">what is known as a Josephson junction<\/a>, an overlap of two metals separated by an electrical insulator that enables the quantum tunneling of electrons that creates qubits.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe performance of the devices in our lab are very sensitive to that step now. Historically, that was not necessarily obvious. But our devices are at a level of performance that we\u2019re able to see big differences based on subtle changes that we make to the formation of the Josephson junction,\u201d Fatemi said. \u201cSo we\u2019re entering a new domain for what matters or doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The researchers found that the resulting thin film produced qubits of incredibly high quality and greatly boosted device performance.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe\u2019re right at the world-leading edge,\u201d Fatemi said. \u201cThis is a big step forward not only for our group but also Cornell\u2019s efforts in superconducting quantum information devices.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Co-authors include\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aep.cornell.edu\/faculty-directory\/david-anthony-muller\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">David Muller<\/a>, the Samuel B. Eckert Professor of Engineering in Duffield Engineering and co-director of the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science; doctoral students Lingda Kong, Daniel Tong, Haoran Lu, Saswata Roy and Luojia Zhang; postdoctoral researchers Simon Reinhardt and Xinyi Du; Gabriele Di Gianluca of University of Florida, Gainesville and the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnf.cornell.edu\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility<\/a>\u00a0Research Experience for Undergraduates (CNF REU) program; and Aleksandra Biedron of the New York Center for Research, Economic Advancement, Technology, Engineering and Science (NY CREATES).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The research was supported by the Microelectronics Commons Program, a DoW initiative, and the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The researchers made use of CNF, a member of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure, which is supported by the National Science Foundation, and the\u202f<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ccmr.cornell.edu\/facilities\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Cornell Center for Materials Research<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Insider Brief Cornell researchers developed a krypton-based sputtering process that deposits high-quality superconducting tantalum films on silicon at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[18,19,17,133],"class_list":["post-645266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117121733910502807","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}