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

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 two different substrates by dc reactive magnetron sputtering. The TiN films grown on (0001) sapphire exhibit (111) crystal orientation, while that grown on (100) Si substrates exhibit (100) orientation. Moreover, the samples grown on Si reveal a relatively lower level of disorder, accompanied by the higher critical transition temperature Tc and smaller magnitude of upper critical field slope near Tc. Remarkably, we uncovered a rather high value of superconducting gap (with Δ₀/kBTc = 3.05) in TiN film on Si indicating a very strong coupling superconductivity, in sharp contrast to the case using sapphires as the substrate which reveals a weak-coupling feature. Further analysis shows that the weakened electronic screening effect due to the high level of disorder and the suppressed electronic density of states may be the underlying reasons for the occurrence of weak coupling superconductivity in the TiN films based on sapphire substrate.