Diode effects in the surface superconductivity regime

¹  INPAC-Institute for Nanoscale Physics and Chemistry, K.U. Leuven - Celestijnenlaan 200D, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium
²  Departamento de Fisica, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco - Cidade Universitaria, 50670-901 Recife-PE, Brazil

Received: 3 May 2007
Accepted: 13 August 2007

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.