Magnetoconductance and photoresponse properties of disordered NbTiN filmsShow others and affiliations
2021 (English)In: Physical Review B, ISSN 2469-9950, E-ISSN 2469-9969, Vol. 104, no 18, article id 184514Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
We report on the experimental study of phonon properties and electron-phonon scattering in thin superconducting NbTiN films, which are intensively exploited in various applications. Studied NbTiN films with sub-10-nm thicknesses are disordered with respect to electron transport, the Ioffe-Regel parameter of kFle = 2.5-3.0 (kF is the Fermi wave vector, and le is the electron mean free path), the inelastic electron-phonon interaction, and the product qTle << 1 (qT is the wave vector of a thermal phonon). By means of magnetoconductance and photoresponse techniques, we derive the inelastic electron-phonon scattering rate 1/tau e-ph and determine sound velocities and phonon heat capacities. In the temperature range from 12 to 20 K, the scattering rate varies with temperature as 1/tau e-ph proportional to T 3.45 +/- 0.05; its value extrapolated to 10 K amounts to approximately 1/16 ps. Making a comparative analysis of our films and other films used in superconducting devices, such as polycrystalline granular NbN and amorphous WSi, we find a systematic reduction of the sound velocity in all these films by about 50% compared to the corresponding bulk crystalline materials. A corresponding increase in the phonon heat capacities in all these films is, however, less than the Debye model predicts. We attribute these findings to reduced film dimensionality and film morphology.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
American Physical Society (APS) , 2021. Vol. 104, no 18, article id 184514
National Category
Condensed Matter Physics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-306814DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.104.184514ISI: 000730130800002Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85120710925OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-306814DiVA, id: diva2:1627023
Note
QC 20220112
2022-01-122022-01-122022-06-25Bibliographically approved