Substrate and process dependent losses in superconducting thin film resonators

We measured the quality factor (Q) and hence the losses of thin film superconducting Nb coplanar waveguide resonators fabricated with processes and materials similar to those used for Josephson effect qubits, where such losses can cause significant decoherence. Intrinsic Q-values range from several thousand to almost 10⁶ depending on the process details. Reactive ion etching appears to reduce the resonator Q-values and the lift-off process can also degrade the Q-value for some resists. The resistivity of the Si substrates affects the intrinsic Q at 1 K, where the resonators were measured. The Q-values obtained for optimized processing are sufficiently high as to suggest that qubits fabricated by a similar technique would not be limited by losses associated with the film or substrate.