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We investigate electronic transport in Josephson junctions formed by individual single-walled carbon nanotubes coupled to superconducting electrodes. We observe enhanced zero-bias conductance (up to 10e2/h) and pronounced sub-harmonic gap structures in differential conductance, which arise from the multiple Andreev reflections at superconductor/nanotube interfaces. The voltage-current characteristics of these junctions display abrupt switching from the supercurrent branch to the resistive branch, with a gate-tunable switching current ranging from 65 pA to 2.5 nA. The finite resistance observed on the supercurrent branch and the magnitude of the switching current are in good agreement with the classical phase diffusion model for resistively and capacitively shunted junctions.


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Phase Diffusion in Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Josephson Transistors

Show Author's information Yong Zhang§Gang LiuChun Ning Lau( )
Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of CaliforniaRiverside CA 92521 USA

§ Present address: School of Physical Science & Technology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China

Abstract

We investigate electronic transport in Josephson junctions formed by individual single-walled carbon nanotubes coupled to superconducting electrodes. We observe enhanced zero-bias conductance (up to 10e2/h) and pronounced sub-harmonic gap structures in differential conductance, which arise from the multiple Andreev reflections at superconductor/nanotube interfaces. The voltage-current characteristics of these junctions display abrupt switching from the supercurrent branch to the resistive branch, with a gate-tunable switching current ranging from 65 pA to 2.5 nA. The finite resistance observed on the supercurrent branch and the magnitude of the switching current are in good agreement with the classical phase diffusion model for resistively and capacitively shunted junctions.

Keywords: Carbon nanotubes, quantum dot, electrical transport, Josephson junctions, supercurrent

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Publication history

Received: 12 May 2008
Revised: 01 July 2008
Accepted: 06 July 2008
Published: 01 February 2008
Issue date: February 2008

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© Tsinghua Press and Springer-Verlag 2008

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