Related papers: Enhanced Cooper pairing in nano-patterned metals
The quest to create superconductors with higher transition temperatures is as old as superconductivity itself. One strategy, popular after the realization that (conventional) superconductivity is mediated by phonons, is to chemically…
There is rich experimental evidence that granular superconductors and superconducting films often exhibit a higher transition temperature, $T_{c}$, than that in bulk samples of the same material. This paper suggests that this enhancement…
We explore the influence of the nanoporous structure on the thermal relaxation of electrons and holes excited by ultrashort laser pulses ($\sim 7$ fs) in thin gold films. Plasmon decay into hot electron-hole pairs results in the generation…
We present the results of the comparative study of the influence of disorder on transport properties in continuous and nanoperforated TiN films. We show that nanopatterning turns a thin TiN film into an array of superconducting weak links…
Superconductivity and its underlying mechanisms are one of the most active research fields in condensed-matter physics. An important question is how to enhance the transition temperature $T_{\rm c}$ of a superconductor. In this respect, the…
Transparent conducting oxides (TCO) are emerging as possible alternative constituent materials to replace noble metals such as silver and gold for low-loss plasmonic and metamaterial (MMs) applications in the near infrared (NIR) regime. The…
Deterministic enhancement of the superconducting (SC) critical temperature $T_c$ is a long-standing goal in material science. One strategy is engineering a material at the nanometer scale such that quantum confinement strengthens the…
Superconducting properties of thin films can be vastly different from those of bulk materials. Seminal work has shown the critical temperature Tc of elemental superconductors decreases with decreasing film thickness when the normal-state…
Lattice compression has emerged as a fundamental tuning parameter for nickelate superconductivity. Pressure acts as a trigger to induce superconductivity in bulk Ruddlesden-Popper nickelates. For infinite-layer nickelate thin films,…
Recently, the films of the Ruddlesden-Popper (RP) nickelate superconductors, in which the (La,Pr)$_3$Ni$_2$O$_7$ system exhibits a remarkable transition temperature $T_c$ exceeding 40 K, were synthesized at ambient pressure. We…
A promising path to realizing higher superconducting transition temperatures $T_c$ is the strategic engineering of artificial heterostructures. For example, quantum materials could, in principle, be coupled with other materials to produce a…
A comprehensive rational thermal material design paradigm requires the ability to reduce and enhance the thermal conductivities of nanomaterials. In contrast to the existing ability to reduce the thermal conductivity, methods that allow to…
We propose to raise the critical temperature $T_c$ for superconductivity in doped C$_{60}$ molecular crystals by increasing the electronic density of states at the Fermi level $N(E_F)$ and thus the electron-phonon coupling constant in…
The pairing temperature of superconducting thin films is expected to display, within the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory, oscillations as a function of the film thickness. We show that the pattern of these oscillations switches between two…
Nb films containing extended arrays of holes with 45-nm diameter and 100-nm spacing have been fabricated using anodized aluminum oxide (AAO) as substrate. Pronounced matching effects in the magnetization and Little-Parks oscillations of the…
The interplay between electronic properties and optical response enables the realization of novel types of materials with tunable responses. Superconductors are well known to exhibit profound changes in the electronic structure related to…
Light-matter interactions have generated considerable interest as a means to manipulate material properties. Light-induced superconductivity has been demonstrated using pulsed lasers. An attractive alternative possibility is to exploit…
Quantum confinement of the perpendicular motion of electrons in single-crystalline metallic superconducting nanofilms splits the conduction band into a series of single-electron subbands. A distinctive feature of such a nanoscale multi-band…
An improved nanopatterning procedure has been developed to obtain YBCO nanowires with cross sections as small as 50x50 nm^2, protected by an Au capping layer. To probe the effective role of the Au protecting layer, we have measured the…
Patterning of diamond-like carbon (DLC) and DLC:metal nanocomposites is of interest for an increasing number of applications. We demonstrate a nanoimprint lithography process based on silicon containing thermoplastic resist combined with…