1. Gate-Controlled Suspended Titanium Nanobridge Supercurrent Transistor
- Author
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Elia Strambini, Lucia Sorba, Claudio Puglia, Valentina Zannier, Giorgio De Simoni, Francesco Giazotto, Davide Degli Esposti, and Mirko Rocci
- Subjects
Josephson effect ,Materials science ,FOS: Physical sciences ,General Physics and Astronomy ,Field effect ,chemistry.chemical_element ,02 engineering and technology ,010402 general chemistry ,01 natural sciences ,7. Clean energy ,law.invention ,Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) ,Suspended metallic nanowire ,law ,Condensed Matter::Superconductivity ,Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) ,General Materials Science ,Superconductivity ,Condensed Matter - Materials Science ,Condensed Matter - Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics ,business.industry ,Condensed Matter - Superconductivity ,Transistor ,Supercurrent ,General Engineering ,Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) ,Dayem bridge ,Supercurrent transistor ,021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology ,0104 chemical sciences ,chemistry ,Optoelectronics ,Condensed Matter::Strongly Correlated Electrons ,0210 nano-technology ,business ,Titanium - Abstract
In a family of experiments carried on all-metallic supercurrent nano-transistors a surprising gating effect has been recently shown. These include the full suppression of the critical supercurrent, the increase of quasiparticle population, the manipulation of the superconducting phase, and the broadening of the switching current distributions. Aside from the high potential for future applications, these findings raised fundamental questions on the origin of these phenomena. To date, two complementary hypotheses are under debate: an electrostatically-triggered orbital polarization at the superconductor surface, or the injection of highly-energetic quasiparticles extracted from the gate. Here, we tackle this crucial issue via a fully suspended gate-controlled Ti nano-transistor. Our geometry allows to eliminate any direct injection of quasiparticles through the substrate thereby making cold electron field emission through the vacuum the only possible charge transport mechanism. With the aid of a fully numerical 3D model in combination with the observed phenomenology and thermal considerations we can rule out, with any realistic likelihood, the occurrence of cold electron field emission. Excluding these two trivial phenomena is pivotal in light of understanding the microscopic nature of gating effect in superconducting nanostructures, which represents an unsolved puzzle in contemporary superconductivity. Yet, from the technological point of view, our suspended fabrication technique provides the enabling technology to implement a variety of applications and fundamental studies combining, for instance, superconductivity with nano-mechanics., 7 pages, 4 color figures
- Published
- 2020
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