Supercurrent diode effect in thin film Nb tracks

Abstract

We demonstrate nonreciprocal critical current in 65 nm thick polycrystalline and epitaxial Nb thin films patterned into tracks. The nonreciprocal behavior gives a supercurrent diode effect, where the current passed in one direction is a supercurrent and the other direction is a normal state (resistive) current. We attribute fabrication artefacts to creating the supercurrent diode effect in our tracks. We study the variation of the diode effect with temperature and magnetic field, and find a dependence with the width of the Nb tracks from 2-10 $\mu$m. For both polycrystalline and epitaxial samples, we find that tracks of width 4 $\mu$m provides the largest supercurrent diode efficiency of up to $\approx$30$\%$, with the effect reducing or disappearing in the widest tracks of 10 $\mu$m. We propose a model based on the limiting contributions to the critical current density to explain the track width dependence of the induced supercurrent diode effect. It is anticipated that the supercurrent diode will become a ubiquitous component of the superconducting computer.