Mutual and Self-Inductance in Planarized Multilayered Superconductor Integrated Circuits: Microstrips, Striplines, Bends, Meanders, Ground Plane Perforations

Data are presented on mutual and self-inductance of various inductors used in multilayered superconductor integrated circuits: microstrips and striplines with widths from 250 nm to a few micrometers, located on the same layer at various distances from each other, from 250 nm to a few micrometers, and/or on different layers spaced vertically; effect of long slits in the ground plane(s) along the inductors on their mutual inductance; inductance of right-angled bends; and inductance of meanders. Measurements were done using circuits fabricated in the SFQ5ee and the SC1 fully planarized fabrication processes with eight niobium layers and Nb/Al-AlO
_x
/Nb Josephson junctions, developed at MIT Lincoln Laboratory for superconductor electronics. Simple analytical expressions for mutual and self-inductance of the basic inductors are given, describing experimental data with accuracy better than 2% over a very wide range of parameters. Mutual coupling between microstrips is long-ranged and decreases as a second power of distance between them, making microstrips unsuitable for very large scale integrated circuits. Mutual inductance of striplines decreases exponentially with distance between them on a scale of
$({\boldsymbol{H}} + 2{\boldsymbol{\lambda }})/{\boldsymbol{\pi }}$
∼ 0.3 μm, where
${\boldsymbol{H}}$
and
${\boldsymbol{\lambda }}$
are, respectively, the distance between and magnetic field penetration depth in superconducting ground planes, whereas superconducting properties of the signal traces are practically irrelevant. This decay distance determines the scale of integration above which adjacent inductors in a circuit become strongly coupled. Dependence of mutual inductance on the linewidth of wires is weak. As a result, the area of flux transformers—an essential component of all superconductor digital circuits using ac power, qubits, and sensor arrays—scales poorly with the linewidth, potentially restricting scalability of the circuits.