Visualizing landscapes of the superconducting gap in heterogeneous superconductor thin films: geometric influences on proximity effects
arXiv:1203.0354 · doi:10.1038/nphys2287
Abstract
The proximity effect is a central feature of superconducting junctions as it underlies many important applications in devices and can be exploited in the design of new systems with novel quantum functionality. Recently, exotic proximity effects have been observed in various systems, such as superconductor-metallic nanowires and graphene-superconductor structures. However, it is still not clear how superconducting order propagates spatially in a heterogeneous superconductor system. Here we report intriguing influences of junction geometry on the proximity effect for a 2D heterogeneous superconductor system comprised of 2D superconducting islands on top of a surface metal. Depending on the local geometry, the superconducting gap induced in the surface metal region can either be confined to the boundary of the superconductor, in which the gap decays within a short distance (~ 15 nm), or can be observed nearly uniformly over a distance of many coherence lengths due to non-local proximity effects.
arXiv comment17 pages, 4 figures
References in corpus (13)
- Quasiclassical Green's function approach to mesoscopic superconductivity
- Keldysh technique and non-linear sigma-model: basic principles and applications
- Revealing the electronic structure of a carbon nanotube carrying a supercurrent
- Novel Circuit Theory of Andreev Reflection
- Local Density of States in a Dirty Normal Metal connected to a Superconductor
- Phase controlled superconducting proximity effect probed by tunneling spectroscopy
- Hard Superconductivity of a Soft Metal in the Quantum Regime
- Transport Through Andreev Bound States in a Graphene Quantum Dot
- Proximity Effect and Multiple Andreev Reflections in Diffusive SNS Junctions
- Proximity-induced superconductivity in nanowires: Mini-gap state and differential magnetoresistance oscillations
- Coherent low-energy charge transport in a diffusive S-N-S junction
- Universal Quenching of Superconductivity in Two-dimensional Nano-islands
- Andreev Reflection and Proximity effect
Cited by in corpus (30)
- Topological Superconductor Bi2Te3/NbSe2 heterostructures
- Remarkable effects of disorder on superconductivity of single atomic layers of lead on silicon
- Two-dimensional Superconductors with Atomic-scale Thicknesses
- Evidence for interfacial superconductivity in a bi-collinear antiferromagnetically ordered FeTe monolayer on a topological insulator
- Ginzburg-Landau theory for multiband superconductors: microscopic derivation
- Scanning tunneling spectroscopy study of the proximity effect in a disordered two-dimensional metal
- Evidence for time-reversal symmetry breaking of the superconducting state near twin-boundary interfaces in FeSe
- Proximity effect between two superconductors spatially resolved by scanning tunneling spectroscopy
- Nanoscale assembly of superconducting vortices with scanning tunnelling microscope tip
- Proximity-effect-induced Superconducting Gap in Topological Surface States - A Point Contact Spectroscopy Study of NbSe2/Bi2Se3 Superconductor-Topological Insulator Heterostructures
- Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy of Proximity Superconductivity in Epitaxial Multilayer Graphene
- Quantum particle confined to a thin-layer volume: Non-uniform convergence toward the curved surface
- Tuning Pairing Amplitude and Spin-Triplet Texture by Curving Superconducting Nanostructures
- Evidence for d-wave superconductivity in single layer FeSe/SrTiO3 probed by quasiparticle scattering off step edges
- Enhancement and termination of the superconducting proximity effect due to atomic-scale defects visualized by scanning tunneling microscopy
- PTCDA molecular monolayer on Pb thin films: An unusual π-electron Kondo system and its interplay with a quantum-confined superconductor
- Subgap resonant quasiparticle transport in normal-superconductor quantum dot devices
- High operating temperature in V-based superconducting quantum interference proximity transistors
- Closing the superconducting gap in small Pb-nanoislands with high magnetic fields
- Creating Nanostructured Superconductors On Demand by Local Current Annealing
- Multigap superconductivity and interaction driven resonances in superconducting nanofilms with an inner potential barrier
- Transmission gaps from corrugations
- Influence of nano-hole defects and their geometric arrangements on the superfluid density in atomically thin single crystals of indium superconductor
- Coherent electron transport in a helical nanotube
- Local density of states in clean two-dimensional superconductor--normal metal--superconductor heterostructures
- Strong phase coherence and vortex matter in a fractal system with proximity-induced superconductivity
- Anomalous superconducting proximity effect of planar Pb-RhPb2 heterojunctions in the clean limit
- Establishment of global phase coherence in a highly disordered fractal MgO/MgB2 nanocomposite: Roles of interface, morphology and defect
- Vortex Pinning in Niobium covered by a thin polycrystalline Gold
- Enhancing long-range order in disordered two-band s-wave superconductors