From weak to strong-coupling superconductivity tuned by substrate in TiN films

Abstract The interplay between substrates and superconducting thin films has attracted increasing attention. Here, we report an in-depth investigation on superconducting properties of the epitaxial TiN thin films grown on three different substrates by dc reactive magnetron sputtering. The TiN films grown on (0001) sapphire exhibit (111) crystal orientation, while that grown on (100) Si and MgO substrates exhibit (100) orientation. Moreover, the samples grown on Si reveal a relatively lower level of disorder, accompanied by the higher critical transition temperature T c and smaller magnitude of upper critical field slope near T c . Remarkably, we uncovered a rather high value of superconducting gap (with <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mrow> <mml:msub> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">Δ</mml:mi> <mml:mn>0</mml:mn> </mml:msub> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>/</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>k</mml:mi> <mml:mi>B</mml:mi> </mml:msub> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>T</mml:mi> <mml:mi>c</mml:mi> </mml:msub> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> = 3.05) in TiN film on Si indicating a very strong coupling superconductivity, in sharp contrast to the case using sapphires and MgO as the substrate which reveals a weak-coupling feature. The comprehensive analysis considering the scenarios of the three substrate shows that the grain size of the thin films may be an important factor influencing the superconductivity.