Superconducting vanadium/indium-arsenide hybrid nanowires

We report MBE synthesis of InAs/vanadium hybrid nanowires. The vanadium was deposited without breaking ultra-high vacuum after InAs nanowire growth, minimizing any effect of oxidation and contamination at the interface between the two materials. We investigated four different substrate temperatures during vanadium deposition, ranging from -150°C to 250°C.

The structural relation between vanadium and InAs depended on the deposition temperature. The three lower temperature depositions gave vanadium shells with a polycrystalline, granular morphology and the highest temperature resulted in vanadium reacting with the InAs nanowire. We fabricated electronic devices from the hybrid nanowires and obtained a high out-of-plane critical magnetic field, exceeding the bulk value for vanadium.

However, size effects arising from the nanoscale grains resulted in the absence of a well-defined critical temperature, as well as device-to-device variation in the resistivity vs. temperature dependence during the transition to the superconducting state.