Researchers Find Way to Form Diodes From Superconductors

upstart writes:

These novel superconductor diodes, however, operate at much lower temperatures than their semiconductor counterparts and are therefore useful in quantum technologies:

Most of our everyday electronic appliances, such as radios, logic components or solar panels, rely on diodes where current can flow primarily in one direction. Such diodes rely on the electronic properties of semiconductor systems which cease to work at the ultralow sub-Kelvin temperatures required in tomorrow's quantum technology. Superconductors are metals whose electrical resistivity is usually zero but, when contacted with other metals, can exhibit high contact resistance.

This can be understood from the energy gap, which indicates a forbidden region for electronic excitations that form in superconductors. It resembles the energy gap in semiconductors but is typically much smaller. While the presence of such a gap has been known for decades, the diode-like feature has not been previously observed, because it requires breaking the usually robust symmetry of the contact's current-voltage characteristics.

The new work demonstrates how this symmetry can be broken with the help of a ferromagnetic insulator suitably placed in the junction. Since a big part of today's research on quantum technologies is based on superconducting materials operating at ultralow temperatures, this innovation is readily available for them.

Original source from the University of Jyvaskyla

Journal Reference:
Strambini, E., Spies, M., Ligato, N., et al. Superconducting spintronic tunnel diode [open], Nature Communications
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29990-2

Original Submission

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