Kinetic inductance as a microwave circuit design variable by multilayer fabrication

We report on the development of a reliable NbN/Al/Nb/NbN multilayer fabrication technique for combining design elements with and without kinetic inductance in superconducting microwave circuits. As a proof-of-concept we demonstrate the application of the proposed technique to build a slow microwave propagation line matched to 50 Omega terminals. Fabrication details along with the design and measurements are discussed. At 8 GHz the presented device operates as a dc controllable full-turn phase shifter. We suggest that by exploiting the kinetic inductance as a design variable one can greatly improve operation parameters for a variety of standard microwave designs such as step-impedance filters and resonators.