Nonreciprocal supercurrent in thin film of type II superconducting Sn

Abstract

Abstract The nonreciprocal supercurrent, namely the superconducting diode effect, can be realized with various mechanisms. The recent study has demonstrated the superconducting diode effect on thin films under the out-of-plane magnetic field, owing to the asymmetric Bean–Livingston barrier on the edge. In this study, we investigated the nonreciprocal supercurrent in a thin film of Sn deposited on a diamond substrate. The Ginzburg-Landau parameter κ in the thin film was estimated to be 0.711 which is slightly higher than 1 / 2 (0.707). We observed the nonreciprocal supercurrent owing to the asymmetric energy barrier for flux penetration on the edge.