Two-dimensional superconductors have attracted growing interest because of their scientific novelty, structural tunability, and useful properties. Studies of their magnetic responses, however, are often hampered by difficulties to grow large-size samples of high quality and uniformity. We report here an imaging method that employed NV- centers in diamond as sensor capable of mapping out the microwave magnetic field distribution on an ultrathin superconducting film of micron size. Measurements on a 33nm-thick film and a 125nm-thick bulk-like film of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ revealed that the ac Meissner effect (or repulsion of ac magnetic field) set in at 78K and 91K, respectively; the latter was the superconducting transition temperature (Tc) of both films. The unusual ac magnetic response of the thin film presumably was due to thermally excited vortex-antivortex diffusive motion in the film. Spatial resolution of our ac magnetometer was limited by optical diffraction and the noise level was at 14 μT/Hz1/2. The technique could be extended with better detection sensitivity to extract local ac conductivity/susceptibility of ultrathin or monolayer superconducting samples as well as ac magnetic responses of other two-dimensional exotic thin films of limited lateral size.
@article{arxiv.1905.07083,
title = {Mapping Dynamical Magnetic Responses of Ultra-thin Micron-size Superconducting Films using Nitrogen-vacancy Centers in Diamond},
author = {Ying Xu and Yijun Yu and Yuen Yung Hui and Yudan Su and Jun Cheng and Huan-Cheng Chang and Yuanbo Zhang and Y. Ron Shen and Chuanshan Tian},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1905.07083},
year = {2019}
}