Universal Quenching of Superconductivity in Two-dimensional Nano-islands

Abstract

We systematically address superconductivity of Pb nano-islands with different thicknesses and lateral sizes via a scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy. Reduction of the superconducting gap is observed even when the island is larger than the bulk coherence length and becomes very fast below ~ 50 nm lateral size. The suppression of gap with size depends to a good approximation only on the volume of the island and is independent of its shape. Theoretical analysis indicates that the universal quenching behavior is primarily manifested by the mean number of electronic orbitals within the pairing energy window.

arXiv comment19 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (5)

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• Hard Superconductivity of a Soft Metal in the Quantum Regime
• Observation of shell effects in superconducting nanoparticles of Sn
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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Visualizing landscapes of the superconducting gap in heterogeneous superconductor thin films: geometric influences on proximity effects
• Closing the superconducting gap in small Pb-nanoislands with high magnetic fields
• Spectroscopic Visualization of a Robust Electronic Response of Semiconducting Nanowires to Deposition of Superconducting Islands
• Modeling Green's functions measurements with two-tip scanning tunneling microscopy
• An Air-Stable and Atomically Thin Graphene/Gallium Superconducting Heterostructure