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2005 Nuggets

Dissipation in one-dimensional superconductor
(Mingliang Tian, Jinguo Wang,, James Kurtz, Theresa Mayer, Ying Liu, Peter Schiffer, Thomas E. Mallouk and M.H.W.Chan, IRG 3)

The nature of dissipation in a one-dimensional (1D) superconductor below Tc is extensively debated in the last two decades. A major reason for the uncertainties is the variety of microstructure and morphology of the samples. In order to eliminate the influence of sample morphology and to single out what is the intrinsic phenomena due to size confinement, we made a systematic study of the transport properties of single-crystal Sn nanowires with diameters of 20 - 100 nm and length prepared by a template-assembly technique. Our results show a clear crossover from bulk-like to 1d-like behavior when the diameter of the wires is reduced below 60 nm (4 times smaller than the bulk coherence length). Two different dissipative regimes, i.e., low current "ohmic"-like finite residual resistive dissipation and high current-induced step-like dissipative regime, are found.