English

Superconductivity enhanced conductance fluctuations in few layer graphene nanoribbons

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2015-05-14 v1

Abstract

We investigate the mesoscopic disorder induced rms conductance variance δG\delta G in a few layer graphene nanoribbon (FGNR) contacted by two superconducting (S) Ti/Al contacts. By sweeping the back-gate voltage, we observe pronounced conductance fluctuations superimposed on a linear background of the two terminal conductance G. The linear gate-voltage induced response can be modeled by a set of inter-layer and intra-layer capacitances. δG\delta G depends on temperature T and source-drain voltage VsdV_{sd}. δG\delta G increases with decreasing T and Vsd|V_{sd}|. When lowering Vsd|V_{sd}|, a pronounced cross-over at a voltage corresponding to the superconducting energy gap Δ\Delta is observed. For Vsd\ltequivΔ|V_{sd}|\ltequiv \Delta the fluctuations are markedly enhanced. Expressed in the conductance variance GGSG_{GS} of one graphene-superconducutor (G-S) interface, values of 0.58 e^2/h are obtained at the base temperature of 230 mK. The conductance variance in the sub-gap region are larger by up to a factor of 1.4-1.8 compared to the normal state. The observed strong enhancement is due to phase coherent charge transfer caused by Andreev reflection at the nanoribbon-superconductor interface.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0912.0389,
  title  = {Superconductivity enhanced conductance fluctuations in few layer graphene nanoribbons},
  author = {J. Trbovic and N. Minder and F. Freitag and C. Schönenberger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0912.0389},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

15 pages, 5 figures