English

Superconductor to weak-insulator transitions in disordered Tantalum Nitride films

Superconductivity 2017-11-08 v2

Abstract

We study the two-dimensional superconductor-insulator transition (SIT) in thin films of tantalum nitride. At zero magnetic field, films can be disorder-tuned across the SIT by adjusting thickness and film stoichiometry; insulating films exhibit classical hopping transport. Superconducting films exhibit a magnetic field-tuned SIT, whose insulating ground state at high field appears to be a quantum-corrected metal. Scaling behavior at the field-tuned SIT shows classical percolation critical exponents zνz \nu \approx 1.3, with a corresponding critical field HcHc2H_c \ll H_{c2}. The Hall effect shows a crossing point near HcH_c, but with a non-universal critical value ρxyc\rho_{xy}^c comparable to the normal state Hall resistivity. We propose that high-carrier density metals will always exhibit this pattern of behavior at the boundary between superconducting and (trivially) insulating ground states.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1705.01732,
  title  = {Superconductor to weak-insulator transitions in disordered Tantalum Nitride films},
  author = {Nicholas P. Breznay and Mihir Tendulkar and Li Zhang and Sang-Chul Lee and Aharon Kapitulnik},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1705.01732},
  year   = {2017}
}

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