Nonreciprocal Supercurrents in a Field-Free Graphene Josephson Triode

Nano Lett. 2023 Jun 14;23(11):5257-5263. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c01276. Epub 2023 May 16.

Abstract

Superconducting diodes are proposed nonreciprocal circuit elements that should exhibit nondissipative transport in one direction while being resistive in the opposite direction. Multiple examples of such devices have emerged in the past couple of years; however, their efficiency is typically limited, and most of them require a magnetic field to function. Here we present a device that achieves efficiencies approaching 100% while operating at zero field. Our samples consist of a network of three graphene Josephson junctions linked by a common superconducting island, to which we refer as a Josephson triode. The three-terminal nature of the device inherently breaks the inversion symmetry, and the control current applied to one of the contacts breaks the time-reversal symmetry. The triode's utility is demonstrated by rectifying a small (nA scale amplitude) applied square wave. We speculate that devices of this type could be realistically employed in the modern quantum circuits.

Keywords: Josephson junctions; quantum devices; superconducting diode effect; superconductivity.