Electric breakdown effect in the current-voltage characteristics of amorphous indium oxide thin films near the superconductor-insulator transition

Abstract

Current-voltage characteristics in the insulator bordering superconductivity in disordered thin films exhibit current jumps of several orders of magnitude due to the development of a thermally bistable electronic state at very low temperatures. In this high-resolution study we find that the jumps can be composed of many (up to 100) smaller jumps that appear to be random. This indicates that inhomogeneity develops near the transition to the insulator and that the current breakdown proceed via percolative paths spanning from one electrode to the other.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (10)

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Superinsulator-Superconductor Duality in Two Dimensions
• Quantum criticality and multiple crossing points in the magnetoresistance of thin TiN-films
• Hysteresis and jumps in the I-V curves of disordered two-dimensional materials
• On the dilemma between percolation processes and fluctuating pairs as the origin of the enhanced conductivity above the superconducting transition in cuprates