Diode effects in the surface superconductivity regime

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Published 11 September 2007 Europhysics Letters Association
, , Citation J. Van de Vondel et al 2007 EPL 80 17006 DOI 10.1209/0295-5075/80/17006

0295-5075/80/1/17006

Abstract

In this letter we demonstrate that large periodic arrays of asymmetric antidots perforated in a superconducting Al film rectify very efficiently an ac drive into a collective unidirectional synchronous motion of millions of vortices. Moreover, the rectification process has two distinctly different regimes: delocalized high-temperature regime with collective inter-antidot guided vortex motion and localized low-temperature regime with the intra-antidot rectification controlled by the fluxoid quantization condition satisfied synchronously at the edge of each antidot. As a result, a single condensed-matter device can be used to produce a tunable reversible macroscopic quantum diode effect important for the realization of the guided motion of large vortex ensembles for fluxonics applications.

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10.1209/0295-5075/80/17006