Reduced leakage current in Josephson tunnel junctions with codeposited barriers

Josephson junctions were fabricated using two different methods of barrier formation. The trilayers employed were Nb/Al- AlOx /Nb on sapphire, where the first two layers were epitaxial. The oxide barrier was formed either by exposing the Al surface to O2 or by codepositing Al in an O2 background. The codeposition process yielded tunnel junctions that showed the theoretically predicted subgap current and no measurable shunt conductance. In contrast, devices with barriers formed by thermal oxidation showed a small shunt conductance in addition to the predicted subgap current. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.