An improved etching process used for the fabrication of submicron Nb/AlOxNb Josephson junctions

A new etching process is proposed for fabricating submicron Nb/AlOx/Nb Josephson junctions for large-scale integration applications. The process uses a dummy etching process to improve the anisotropy in a reactive ion etching scheme. A scanning electron microscope is employed as an etching-end detector. The proposed etching scheme is very useful for producing high-quality submicron junctions with suitable critical current variations.