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We present superconducting monocrystalline Silicon On Insulator thin 33 nm epilayers. They are obtained by nanosecond laser annealing under ultra-high vacuum on 300 mm wafers heavily pre-implantated with boron ($2.5\times \,10^{16}\, at/cm^2$, 3 keV). Superconductivity is discussed in relation to the structural, electrical and material properties, a step towards the integration of ultra-doped superconducting Si at large scale. In particular, we highlight the effect of the nanosecond laser annealing energy and the impact of multiple laser anneals. Increasing the energy leads to a linear increase of the layer thickness, and to the increase of the superconducting critical temperature $T_c$ from zero ($<35\, mK$) to $0.5\,K$. This value is comparable to superconducting Si layers realised by Gas Immersion Laser Doping where the dopants are incorporated without introducing the deep defects associated to implantation. Superconductivity only appears when the annealed depth is larger than the initial amorphous layer induced by the boron implantation. The number of subsequent anneals results in a more homogeneous doping with reduced amount of structural defects and increased conductivity. The quantitative analysis of $T_c$ concludes on a superconducting/ non superconducting bilayer, with an extremely low resistance interface. This highlights the possibility to couple efficiently superconducting Si to Si channels.

Superconductivity in ultra-doped $Si_{1-x}Ge_{x}:B$ epilayers is demonstrated by nanosecond laser doping, which allows introducing substitutional B concentrations well above the solubility limit and up to $7\,at.\%$. A Ge fraction $x$ ranging from 0 to 0.21 is incorporated in $Si:B$ : 1) through a precursor gas by Gas Immersion Laser Doping; 2) by ion implantation, followed by nanosecond laser annealing; 3) by UHV-CVD growth of a thin Ge layer, followed by nanosecond laser annealing. The 30 nm and 80 nm thick $Si_{1-x}Ge_{x}:B$ epilayers display superconducting critical temperatures $T_c$ tuned by B and Ge between 0 and 0.6 K. Within BCS weak-coupling theory, $T_c$ evolves exponentially with both the density of states and the electron-phonon potential. While B doping affects both, through the increase of the carrier density and the tensile strain, Ge incorporation allows addressing independently the lattice deformation influence on superconductivity. To estimate the lattice parameter modulation with B and Ge, Vegard's law is validated for the ternary $SiGeB$ bulk alloy by Density Functional Theory calculations. Its validity is furthermore confirmed experimentally by X-Ray Diffraction. We highlight a global linear dependence of $T_c$ vs. lattice parameter, common for both $Si:B$ and $Si_{1-x}Ge_{x}:B$, with $\delta T_c/T_c \sim 50\,\%$ for $\delta a/a \sim 1\,\%$.

We report on the structural properties of highly B-doped silicon (> 2 at. %) realised by nanosecond laser doping. We investigate the crystalline quality, deformation and B distribution profile of the doped layer by STEM analysis followed by HAADF contrast studies and GPA, and compare the results to SIMS analyses and Hall measurements. When increasing the active B concentration above 4.3 at.%, the fully strained, perfectly crystalline, Si:B layer starts showing dislocations and stacking faults. These only disappear around 8 at.% when the Si:B layer is well accommodated to the substrate. When increasing B incorporation, we increasingly observe small precipitates, filaments with higher active B concentration and stacking faults. At the highest concentrations studied, large precipitates form, related to the decrease of active B concentration. The structural deformation, defect type and concentration, and active B distribution are connected to the initial increase and subsequent gradual loss of superconductivity.

Superconducting boron doped silicon is a promising material for integrated silicon quantum devices. In particular, its low electronic density and moderate disorder make it a suitable candidate for the fabrication of large inductances with low losses at microwave frequencies. Here, we study experimentally the electrodynamics of superconducting silicon thin layers patterned in coplanar waveguide resonators, targeting three key properties: kinetic inductance, internal losses, and the variation of these quantities with the read-out power. We report the first observation in a doped semiconductor of microwave resonances with internal quality factors of a few thousand. As expected in the BCS framework, superconducting silicon presents a large sheet kinetic inductance, in the 50-500 pH range comparable to strongly disordered superconductors, whose temperature dependence is well described by Mattis-Bardeen theory. We find, though, an unexpectedly strong non-linearity of the complex surface impedance which cannot be explained either as a non-linearity induced by depairing or as quasiparticle heating.

In weakly spin-orbit coupled materials, the spin-selective nature of recombination can give rise to large magnetic-field effects, for example on electro-luminescence from molecular semiconductors. While silicon has weak spin-orbit coupling, observing spin-dependent recombination through magneto-electroluminescence is challenging due to the inefficiency of emission due to silicon's indirect band-gap, and to the difficulty in separating spin-dependent phenomena from classical magneto-resistance effects. Here we overcome these challenges to measure magneto-electroluminescence in silicon light-emitting diodes fabricated via gas immersion laser doping. These devices allow us to achieve efficient emission while retaining a well-defined geometry thus suppressing classical magnetoresistance effects to a few percent. We find that electroluminescence can be enhanced by up to 300\% near room temperature in a seven Tesla magnetic field showing that the control of the spin degree of freedom can have a strong impact on the efficiency of silicon LEDs.

We have realised laser-doped all-silicon superconducting (S)/ normal metal (N) bilayers of tunable thickness and dopant concentration. We observed a strong reduction of the bilayers critical temperature when increasing the normal metal thickness, a signature of the highly transparent S/N interface associated to the epitaxial sharp laser doping profile. We extracted the interface resistance by fitting with the linearised Usadel equations, demonstrating a reduction of one order of magnitude from previous superconductor/doped Si interfaces. In this well controlled crystalline system we exploited the low resistance S/N interfaces to elaborate all-silicon lateral SNS Josephson junctions with long range proximity effect. Their dc transport properties, such as the critical and retrapping currents, could be well understood in the diffusive regime. Furthermore, this work lead to the estimation of important parameters in ultra-doped superconducting Si, such as the Fermi velocity, the coherence length, or the electron-phonon coupling constant, fundamental to conceive an all-silicon superconducting electronics., Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures

We achieved ohmic contacts down to 5 K on standard n-doped Ge samples by creating a strongly doped thin Ge layer between the metallic contacts and the Ge substrate. Thanks to the laser doping technique used, Gas Immersion Laser Doping, we could attain extremely large doping levels above the solubility limit, and thus reduce the metal/doped Ge contact resistance. We tested independently the influence of the doping concentration and doped layer thickness, and showed that the ohmic contact improves when increasing the doping level and is not affected when changing the doped thickness. Furthermore, we characterised the doped Ge/Ge contact, showing that at high doping its contact resistance is the dominant contribution to the total contact resistance., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures

We investigate the critical temperature Tc of a thin s-wave superconductor (Nb) proximity coupled to a helical rare earth ferromagnet (Ho). As a function of the Ho layer thickness, we observe multiple oscillations of Tc superimposed on a slow decay, that we attribute to the influence of the Ho on the Nb proximity effect. Because of Ho inhomogeneous magnetization, singlet and triplet pair correlations are present in the bilayers. We take both into consideration when solving the self consistent Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations, and we observe a reasonable agreement. We also observe non-trivial transitions into the superconducting state, the zero resistance state being attained after two successive transitions which appear to be associated with the magnetic structure of Ho., Comment: Main article: 5 pages, 4 figures; Supplementary materials: 4 pages, 5 figures

We have measured the critical current dependence on the magnetic flux of two long SNS junctions differing by the normal wire geometry. The samples are made by a Au wire connected to W contacts, via Focused Ion Beam assisted deposition. We could tune the magnetic pattern from the monotonic gaussian-like decay of a quasi 1D normal wire to the Fraunhofer-like pattern of a square normal wire. We explain the monotonic limit with a semiclassical 1D model, and we fit both field dependences with numerical simulations of the 2D Usadel equation. Furthermore, we observe both integer and fractional Shapiro steps. The magnetic flux dependence of the integer steps reproduces as expected that of the critical current Ic, while fractional steps decay slower with the flux than Ic., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

The hairs of a painting brush withdrawn from a wetting liquid self-assemble into clumps whose sizes rely on a balance between liquid surface tension and hairs bending rigidity. Here we study the situation of an immersed carpet in an evaporating liquid bath : the free extremities of the hairs are forced to pierce the liquid interface. The compressive capillary force on the tip of flexible hairs leads to buckling and collapse. However we find that the spontaneous association of hairs into stronger bundles may allow them to resist capillary buckling. We explore in detail the different structures obtained and compare them with similar patterns observed in micro-structured surfaces such as carbon nanotubes "forests"., Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures

A long phase coherent normal (N) wire between superconductors (S) is characterized by a dense phase dependent Andreev spectrum . We probe this spectrum in a high frequency phase biased configuration, by coupling an NS ring to a multimode superconducting resonator. We detect a dc flux and frequency dependent response whose dissipative and non dissipative components are related by a simple Debye relaxation law with a characteristic time of the order of the diffusion time through the N part of the ring. The flux dependence exhibits $h/2e$ periodic oscillations with a large harmonics content at temperatures where the Josephson current is purely sinusoidal. This is explained considering that the populations of the Andreev levels are frozen on the time-scale of the experiments., Comment: 5 pages,4 figures

Conducting nanowires possess remarkable physical properties unattainable in bulk materials. However our understanding of their transport properties is limited by the difficulty of connecting them electrically. In this Letter we investigate phototransport in both bulk silicon and silicon nanowires using a superconducting multimode resonator operating at frequencies between 0.3 and 3 GHz. We find that whereas the bulk Si response is mainly dissipative, the nanowires exhibit a large dielectric polarizability. This technique is contactless and can be applied to many other semiconducting nanowires and molecules. Our approach also allows to investigate the coupling of electron transport to surface acoustic waves in bulk Si and to electro-mechanical resonances in the nanowires.

We use microwave excitation to elucidate the dynamics of long superconductor / normal metal / superconductor Josephson junctions. By varying the excitation frequency in the range 10 MHz - 40 GHz, we observe that the critical and retrapping currents, deduced from the dc voltage vs. dc current characteristics of the junction, are set by two different time scales. The critical current increases when the ac frequency is larger than the inverse diffusion time in the normal metal, whereas the retrapping current is strongly modified when the excitation frequency is above the electron-phonon rate in the normal metal. Therefore the critical and retrapping currents are associated with elastic and inelastic scattering, respectively.

We report the design and measurement of Superconducting/normal/superconducting (SNS) proximity DC squids in the long junction limit, i.e. superconducting loops interrupted by two normal metal wires roughly a micrometer long. Thanks to the clean interface between the metals, at low temperature a large supercurrent flows through the device. The dc squid-like geometry leads to an almost complete periodic modulation of the critical current through the device by a magnetic flux, with a flux periodicity of a flux quantum h/2e through the SNS loop. In addition, we examine the entire field dependence, notably the low and high field dependence of the maximum switching current. In contrast with the well-known Fraunhoffer-type oscillations typical of short wide junctions, we find a monotonous gaussian extinction of the critical current at high field. As shown in [15], this monotonous dependence is typical of long and narrow diffusive junctions. We also find in some cases a puzzling reentrance at low field. In contrast, the temperature dependence of the critical current is well described by the proximity effect theory, as found by Dubos {\it et al.} [16] on SNS wires in the long junction limit. The switching current distributions and hysteretic IV curves also suggest interesting dynamics of long SNS junctions with an important role played by the diffusion time across the junction., Comment: 12 pages, 16 figures