niobium titanium nitride · film
NbTiN
Niobium nitride with titanium substituted into it, traded for a lower and better-controlled kinetic inductance and a cleaner microwave surface.
NbTiN in numbers
- Transition temperature
- 15 K
- Made as
- film
- Nitrogen line
- Below 77 K
What NbTiN runs in today
Single-photon detectors and high-kinetic-inductance resonators.
Source: The SNSPD literature from Dorenbos et al. (2008) onward
Why engineers choose NbTiN
NbTiN exists because the kinetic inductance of NbN is high and hard to hold constant, and in a detector array or a high-Q resonator the inductance is the quantity being engineered. Titanium lowers it and makes it repeatable across a wafer without giving up much transition temperature, and the resulting film loses less at microwave frequencies. It is the choice when the device is many elements that have to match each other, rather than one element that has to be fast.
Where NbTiN stops
It is still a nitride film whose properties are set in a deposition chamber, so it inherits the reproducibility problem of NbN in a milder form. And its transition temperature keeps it a cryocooler material, with nothing about it that changes where the cold has to come from.
Fields built on NbTiN
NbTiN and the other film conductors
Terms used on this page about NbTiN
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