Focused ion beam direct deposition of superconductive thin film

Focused ion beam direct deposition of niobium has been developed as a technique for fabricating superconductive thin films. A Nb²⁺ ion beam extracted from a Nb10–Au50–Cu40 liquid metal ion source was accelerated to 40 keV, focused, deflected and finally decelerated to 50–1000 eV. The beam current density was 0.4–2 mA/cm² and the minimum deposited linewidth was about 0.5 μm. The sticking probability of the Nb²⁺ ion beam and the critical temperature of deposited niobium films were measured. The deposition at different deposition rates and different residual gas pressure were performed. A clear relation was obtained between the critical temperature and the concentration of contaminations. This relation is consistent with the published relation for bulk niobium if it is assumed that the sticking probability of residual gas is 0.2. However, dependence of the critical temperature on ion energy was not observed. © 1994 American Institute of Physics.