Granular aluminum induced superconductivity in germanium for hole spin-based hybrid devices
In superconductor-semiconductor hybrid structures, superconductivity and spin polarization are competing effects as magnetic fields break Cooper pairs. They can be combined using thin films and in-plane magnetic fields, an approach that enabled the pursuit of Majorana zero modes, Kitaev chains, and Andreev spin qubits (ASQs), but remains challenging for materials with small in-plane $g$-factors or when out-of-plane fields are required. We demonstrate that granular aluminium (grAl), composed of nanometre-scale aluminium grains embedded in an amorphous oxide matrix, can overcome this limitation. By depositing grAl on Ge/SiGe heterostructures, we induce a hard superconducting gap with BCS peaks at $305~\mu\mathrm{eV}$ and magnetic-field resilience for both the in-plane and out-of-plane directions, allowing Zeeman splitting of Yu-Shiba-Rusinov (YSR) states beyond $50~\mu\mathrm{eV}$ (12 GHz). Leveraging this robustness, we reveal signatures of hole physics and discuss a driving mechanism for ASQs regardless of the strength of the Rashba spin-orbit coupling in planar germanium.