Superconducting nanowire diode

Abstract: Semiconducting diode with nonreciprocal transport effect underlies the cornerstone of contemporary integrated circuits (ICs) technology. Due to isotropic superconducting properties and the lack of breaking of inversion symmetry for conventional s-wave superconductors, such a superconducting peer is absent. Recently, a series of superconducting structures, including superconducting superlattice and quantum-material-based superconducting Josephson junction, have exhibited a superconducting diode effect in terms of polarity-dependent critical current. However, due to complex structures, these composite systems are not able to construct large-scale integrated superconducting circuits. Here, we demonstrated the minimal superconducting electric component-superconducting nanowire-based diode with a nonreciprocal transport effect under a perpendicular magnetic field, in which the superconducting to normal metallic phase transition relies on the polarity and amplitude of the bias current. Our nanowire diodes can be reliably operated nearly at all temperatures below the critical temperature, and the rectification efficiency at 2 K can be more than 24%. Moreover, the superconducting nanowire diode is able to rectify both square wave and sine wave signals without any distortion. Combining the superconducting nanowire-based diodes and transistors, superconducting nanowires hold the possibility to construct novel low-dissipation superconducting ICs.