Superconductivity and parity preservation in as-grown In islands on InAs nanowires

We report in-situ synthesis of crystalline indium islands on InAs nanowires grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Structural analysis by transmission electron microscopy showed that In crystals grew in a tetragonal body-centred crystal structure within two families of orientations relative to wurtzite InAs. The crystalline islands had lengths < 500 nm and low-energy surfaces, suggesting that growth was driven mainly by surface energy minimization. Electrical transport through In/InAs devices exhibited Cooper pair charging, evidencing charge parity preservation and a pristine In/InAs interface, with an induced superconducting gap ~ 0.45 meV. Cooper pair charging persisted to temperatures > 1.2 K and magnetic fields ~ 0.7 T, demonstrating that In/InAs hybrids belong to an expanding class of semiconductor/superconductor hybrids operating over a wider parameter space than state-of-the-art Al-based hybrids. Engineering crystal morphology while isolating single islands using shadow epitaxy provides an interesting alternative to previous semiconductor/superconductor hybrid morphologies and device geometries.
Comment: Published in Nano Letters: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c02487