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High-temperature Josephson diode

Nature Materials (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Many superconducting systems with broken time-reversal and inversion symmetry show a superconducting diode effect, a non-reciprocal phenomenon analogous to semiconducting p–n-junction diodes. While the superconducting diode effect lays the foundation for realizing ultralow dissipative circuits, Josephson-phenomena-based diode effect (JDE) can enable the realization of protected qubits. The superconducting diode effect and JDE reported thus far are at low temperatures (~4 K), limiting their applications. Here we demonstrate JDE persisting up to 77 K using an artificial Josephson junction of twisted layers of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ. JDE manifests as an asymmetry in the magnitude and distributions of switching currents, attaining the maximum at 45° twist. The asymmetry is induced by and tunable with a very small magnetic field applied perpendicular to the junction and arises due to interaction between Josephson and Abrikosov vortices. We report a large asymmetry of 60% at 20 K. Our results provide a path towards realizing superconducting Josephson circuits at liquid-nitrogen temperature.

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Fig. 1: Asymmetry of switching currents in a 45°-twisted AJJ of BSCCO at nominally zero applied magnetic field.
Fig. 2: Switching current asymmetry with a perpendicular magnetic field and temperature for the 45°-twisted BSCCO junction.
Fig. 3: Half-wave rectification of the Josephson diode.
Fig. 4: Josephson diode response of 0°-twisted BSCCO JJ.
Fig. 5: Mechanism of the Josephson diode effect.

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Data availability

Source data are provided with this paper. The experimental data used in the figures of the main text are available via Zenodo at https://zenodo.org/record/8267789. Additional data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank E. Zeldov, A. Pasupathy, V. Singh, P. Raychaudhuri, S. Banerjee, S. Gueron, H. Bouchiat, R. Vijay, V. Krasnov, S. Sinha and J. Sarkar for helpful discussions and comments. We thank K. Agarwal and N. Bhatia for their assistance in device fabrication. We thank A. P. Shah for his help in making the SiN membranes for shadow masks. We acknowledge the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Nanomission grant SR/NM/NS-45/2016, CORE grant CRG/2020/003836 and Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) of the Government of India (12-R&D-TFR-5.10-0100) for support. Work in Berlin was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) through CRC 183 (project C02) as well as TWISTGRAPH.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India

    Sanat Ghosh, Vilas Patil, Amit Basu,  Kuldeep, Achintya Dutta, Digambar A. Jangade, Ruta Kulkarni, A. Thamizhavel & Mandar M. Deshmukh

  2. Dahlem Center for Complex Quantum Systems and Fachbereich Physik, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Jacob F. Steiner & Felix von Oppen

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  1. Sanat Ghosh
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Contributions

S.G. and V.P. fabricated the devices. A.B., K. and A.D. helped in the device fabrication. S.G. and A.B. performed the measurements. D.A.J., R.K. and A.T. grew the BSCCO crystals. J.F.S. and F.v.O. developed the theoretical interpretation. S.G., F.v.O. and M.M.D. wrote the paper. All authors provided input on the paper. M.M.D. supervised the project.

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Correspondence to Sanat Ghosh or Mandar M. Deshmukh.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Modulation of switching current with twist angle.

(a) Cross- sectional schematic of twisted BSCCO junction. (b) Equivalent picture of the junction, marked by the dashed rectangle in (a). In the bulk of each BSCCO flake, there are series of intrinsic Josephson junctions (IJJs). At the twisted interface of two BSCCO flakes, an artificial Josephson junction (AJJ) is formed. (c), (d) dc I - V characteristics of 0° and 45° twisted junction at 12 K, and 10 K, respectively. Current in the x-axis is normalized with the area (A) of the junctions to get current densities (J). The magenta-shaded region originates at the interface due to AJJ, while the brown-shaded area is the contribution of IJJs coming from bulk. The switching current density of 45° device is suppressed by a factor of 20 compared to 0° twisted device.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 2 dc I - V characteristic at 60% asymmetry value.

dc I - V charracteristic of the 45° twisted device (D1) at 20 K and at B = –10 μT showing ~ 60% asymmetry. The arrows are for two directions of bias current sweep. Figure S4 in Supplementary Information shows the detailed magnetic field dependent dc I - V characteristics at 20 K of the same device.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 3 Negligible current asymmetry in pristine BSCCO.

(a) Schematic of the measurement scheme. Current is sourced and collected with electrodes 1 and 6. Voltage drop across BSCCO is measured with electrodes 2 and 3. (b) I - V characteristic across pristine BSCCO at 60 K. Negative bias switching branch is flipped to compare it with the positive bias switching branch. The dashed horizontal line ( ± 0.25 mV) indicates the triggering voltage used for obtaining switching currents with the help of a counter. (c) Switching current asymmetry for positive and negative bias with B, applied perpendicular to the device plane. Asymmetry across BSCCO is very small. (d), (e), (f) Distributions of switching currents (\({I}_{{{{\rm{s}}}}}^{+}\) and \({I}_{{{{\rm{s}}}}}^{-}\)) at three different magnetic fields (marked by hexagon, square and star in (c)), –12, 4.1, and 7 μT. Additionally we performed a second control experiment in pristine BSCCO where we restrict the bias current to flow only in the pristine BSCCO and not through the junction. The result is consistent (see Supplementary Information Fig. S14) and the asymmetry we observe is still very small (< 1 %).

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 4 Negligible current asymmetry in intrinsic Josephson junction (IJJ).

(a) Schematic of the measurement scheme. (b) I-V characteristic across the junction at 60 K. The different colored curves are for positive and negative switching branches. AJJ switches at a smaller bias current, marked by a magenta dashed rectangle. IIJ switches at a higher bias current, marked by the brown dashed rectangle. (c) Asymmetry between positive (\({I}_{{{{\rm{s}}}}}^{+}\)) and negative (\({I}_{{{{\rm{s}}}}}^{-}\)) switching currents with B. At each B, 100 switching events were recorded and averaged to get \({I}_{{{{\rm{s}}}}}^{+}\) and \({I}_{{{{\rm{s}}}}}^{-}\). A trigger voltage of ± 3.6 mV was used to get switching currents for IJJ. (d), (e), (f) Distributions of switching currents (\({I}_{{{{\rm{s}}}}}^{+}\) and \({I}_{{{{\rm{s}}}}}^{-}\)) at three different magnetic fields (marked by hexagon, square and star in (c)), –36, 4.1, and 44.5 μT.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 5 Josephson diode behavior of 22° twisted (D5) BSCCO Josephson junction.

(a) Optical micrograph image of 22° twisted BSCCO JJ. The scale bar is 20 μm. (b) dc I - V characteristic of the junction at 50.4 K and at B = –0.78 mT. The two curves are for the up and down sweep of bias current. (c) Absolute values of I and V are plotted to clearly see the asymmetry. Here \(| {I}_{{{{\rm{s}}}}}^{-}|\) is larger than \({I}_{{{{\rm{s}}}}}^{+}\). (d) Variation of asymmetry factor α (defined in the text) with B at 50.4 K. B is applied perpendicular to the junction plane. For each B value, 100 switching events were recorded and averaged to get \({I}_{{{{\rm{s}}}}}^{+}\) and \({I}_{{{{\rm{s}}}}}^{-}\). A trigger voltage of ± 0.2 mV was used to get switching currents. The α is calculated from the average values of \({I}_{{{{\rm{s}}}}}^{+}\) and \({I}_{{{{\rm{s}}}}}^{-}\). Although α of the 22° device varies with B qualitatively like the 45° and 0° devices, there are more complex details to it. The measurement has been done in cryogenic setup 2 with a superconducting magnet. An offset value of 1 mT has been subtracted due to the trapped flux in the superconducting magnet (see Supplementary Information, section S13 for details). (e),(f) Half-wave rectification response of the junction at 50.4 K for two different B values. (g),(h), (i), and (j) Distributions of the switching currents (\({I}_{{{{\rm{s}}}}}^{+}\) and \({I}_{{{{\rm{s}}}}}^{-}\)) at different B values. 104 switching events were recorded to get the histograms.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 6 Temperature and twist angle dependent asymmetry.

We have measured multiple devices at three specific twist angles (0°, 22° and 45°). (a) shows the temperature dependence of maximum switching current asymmetry value for devices with different twist angles. For all the devices, the asymmetry increases at lower temperatures. We do not have data points at lower temperatures for all the devices with 0° twist angle; this is mainly to avoid damage to the devices because of large switching currents at lower temperatures (switching current is strongly dependent on twist angle). (b) shows twist angle dependence of asymmetry value at 60 K. The asymmetry value is maximum for 45° twisted devices and decreases with a decrease in twist angle.

Source data

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Sections 1–23, Figs. 1–22, Tables I and II and discussions.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Josephson diode effect in a 45°-twisted BSCCO JJ.

Source Data Fig. 2

Magnetic-field- and temperature-dependent switching current asymmetry data for a 45°-twisted BSCCO JJ.

Source Data Fig. 3

Data for the rectification response of the Josephson diode effect in a 45°-twisted BSCCO.

Source Data Fig. 4

Data of the Josephson diode behaviour of a 0°-twisted device.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 1

Twist-angle-dependent switching current data.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 2

Data of the d.c. I–V characteristics showing a 60% switching current asymmetry value.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 3

Data of the control experiment showing negligible switching current asymmetry in a pristine BSCCO flake.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 4

Data of the control experiment showing negligible switching current asymmetry in an IJJ.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 5

Data of the Josephson diode behaviour for a 22°-twisted device.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 6

Temperature- and twist-angle-dependent switching current asymmetry data.

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Ghosh, S., Patil, V., Basu, A. et al. High-temperature Josephson diode. Nat. Mater. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-024-01804-4

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