Investigation of dimensionality in superconducting NbN thin film samples with different thicknesses and NbTiN meander nanowire samples by measuring the upper critical field

doi:10.1088/1674-1056/ab9740

Abstract We study superconducting properties of NbN thin film samples with different thicknesses and an ultra-thin NbTiN meander nanowire sample. For the ultra-thin samples, we found that the temperature dependence of upper critical field (H_c2) in parallel to surface orientation shows bending curvature close to critical temperature T_c, suggesting a two-dimensional (2D) nature of the samples. The 2D behavior is further supported by the angular dependence measurements of H_c2 for the thinnest samples. The temperature dependence of parallel upper critical field for the thick films could be described by a model based on the anisotropic Ginzburg-Landau theory. Interestingly, the results measured in the field perpendicular to the film surface orientation show a similar bending curvature but in a much narrow temperature region close to T_c for the ultra-thin samples. We suggest that this feature could be due to suppression of pair-breaking caused by local in-homogeneity. We further propose the temperature dependence of perpendicular H_c2 as a measure of uniformity of superconducting ultra-thin films. For the thick samples, we find that H_c2 shows maxima for both parallel and perpendicular orientations. The H_c2 peak for the perpendicular orientation is believed to be due to the columnar structure formed during the growth of the thick films. The presence of columnar structure is confirmed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). In addition, we have measured the angular dependence of magneto-resistance, and the results are consistent with the H_c2 data.

Keywords: NbN micro-bridges and NbTiN meander nanowire upper critical field low dimensionality anisotropic magneto-resistance

Received: 30 April 2020
Revised: 27 May 2020
Accepted manuscript online:

PACS:	81.16.Rf	(Micro- and nanoscale pattern formation)
	74.78.-w	(Superconducting films and low-dimensional structures)
	74.25.-q	(Properties of superconductors)
	74.25.F-	(Transport properties)

Fund: Project supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB25000000).

Corresponding Authors: Dongning Zheng
E-mail: dzheng@iphy.ac.cn

Cite this article:

Mudassar Nazir, Xiaoyan Yang(杨晓燕), Huanfang Tian(田焕芳), Pengtao Song(宋鹏涛), Zhan Wang(王战), Zhongcheng Xiang(相忠诚), Xueyi Guo(郭学仪), Yirong Jin(金贻荣), Lixing You(尤立星), Dongning Zheng(郑东宁) Investigation of dimensionality in superconducting NbN thin film samples with different thicknesses and NbTiN meander nanowire samples by measuring the upper critical field 2020 Chin. Phys. B 29 087401

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Investigation of dimensionality in superconducting NbN thin film samples with different thicknesses and NbTiN meander nanowire samples by measuring the upper critical field

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