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Register a new userNanoscale assembly of superconducting vortices with scanning tunnelling microscope tip
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Vortices play a crucial role in determining the properties of superconductors as well as their applications. Therefore, characterization and manipulation of vortices, especially at the single vortex level, is of great importance. Among many techniques to study single vortices, scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) stands out as a powerful tool, due to its ability to detect the local electronic states and high spatial resolution. However, local control of superconductivity as well as the manipulation of individual vortices with the STM tip is still lacking. Here we report a new function of the STM, namely to control the local pinning in a superconductor through the heating effect. Such effect allows us to quench the superconducting state at nanoscale, and leads to the growth of vortex-clusters whose size can be controlled by the bias voltage. We also demonstrate the use of an STM tip to assemble single quantum vortices into desired nanoscale configurations.
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The vortex electronic structure in the multiband superconductor NbSe2 is studied by means of Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy (STS) using a superconducting tip. The use of a superconducting tip (Pb) as a probe provides an enhancement of the different features related to the DOS of NbSe2 in the tunneling conductance curves. This use allows the observation of rich patterns of electronic states in the conductance images around the vortex cores in a wide range of temperature, as well as the simultaneous acquisition of Josephson current images in the vortex state.
We describe a new type of scanning probe microscope based on a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) that resides on the apex of a sharp tip. The SQUID-on-tip is glued to a quartz tuning fork which allows scanning at a tip-sample separation of a few nm. The magnetic flux sensitivity of the SQUID is 1.8 {mu}_0/Hz^{1/2} and the spatial resolution is about 200 nm, which can be further improved. This combination of high sensitivity, spatial resolution, bandwidth, and the very close proximity to the sample provides a powerful tool for study of dynamic magnetic phenomena on the nanoscale. The potential of the SQUID-on-tip microscope is demonstrated by imaging of the vortex lattice and of the local AC magnetic response in superconductors.
We consider a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) such that tunneling occurs through two atomically sharp protrusions on its tip. When the two protrusions are separated by at least several atomic spacings, the differential conductance of this STM depends on the electronic transport in the sample between the protrusions. Furthermore two-protrusion tips commonly occur during STM tip preparation. We explore possible applications to probing dynamical impurity potentials on a metallic surface and local transport in an anisotropic superconductor.
Theoretical understanding of scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) measurements involve electronic structure details of the STM tip and the sample being measured. Conventionally, the focus has been on the accuracy of the electronic state simulations of the sample, whereas the STM tip electronic state is typically approximated as a simple spherically symmetric $ s $ orbital. This widely used $ s $ orbital approximation has failed in recent STM studies where the measured STM images of subsurface impurity wave functions in silicon required a detailed description of the STM tip electronic state. In this work, we show that the failure of the $ s $ orbital approximation is due to the indirect band-gap of the sample material silicon (Si), which gives rise to complex valley interferences in the momentum space of impurity wave functions. Based on direct comparison of STM images computed from multi-million-atom electronic structure calculations of impurity wave functions in direct (GaAs) and indirect (Si) band-gap materials, our results establish that whilst the selection of STM tip orbital only plays a minor qualitative role for the direct band gap GaAs material, the STM measurements are dramatically modified by the momentum space features of the indirect band gap Si material, thereby requiring a quantitative representation of the STM tip orbital configuration. Our work provides new insights to understand future STM studies of semiconductor materials based on their momentum space features, which will be important for the design and implementation of emerging technologies in the areas of quantum computing, photonics, spintronics and valleytronics.
Scanning Superconducting QUantum Interference Device (SQUID) microscopy is a powerful tool for imaging local magnetic properties of materials and devices, but it requires a low-vibration cryogenic environment, traditionally achieved by thermal contact with a bath of liquid helium or the mixing chamber of a wet dilution refrigerator. We mount a SQUID microscope on the 3 K plate of a Bluefors cryocooler and characterize its vibration spectrum by measuring SQUID noise in a region of sharp flux gradient. By implementing passive vibration isolation, we reduce relative sensor-sample vibrations to 20 nm in-plane and 15 nm out-of-plane. A variable-temperature sample stage that is thermally isolated from the SQUID sensor enables measurement at sample temperatures from 2.8 K to 110 K. We demonstrate these advances by imaging inhomogeneous diamagnetic susceptibility and vortex pinning in optimally-doped YBCO above 90 K.
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