Superconductivity in a single C60 transistor

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates superconducting single molecule transistors using a single C60 fullerene, revealing new insights into electron transport and Josephson supercurrents in molecular-scale devices.

Contribution

It introduces the realization of superconducting SMTs with a single C60 molecule, expanding the understanding of superconductivity at the molecular scale.

Findings

Superconducting SMTs with a single C60 molecule were successfully fabricated.

Observation of Josephson supercurrents in a zero-dimensional fullerene.

Proximity effect extends superconducting correlations through the molecule.

Abstract

Single molecule transistors (SMTs) are currently attracting enormous attention as possible quantum information processing devices. An intrinsic limitation to the prospects of these however is associated to the presence of a small number of quantized conductance channels, each channel having a high access resistance of at best $R_{K}/2=h/2e^{2}$=12.9 k$\Omega$. When the contacting leads become superconducting, these correlations can extend throughout the whole system by the proximity effect. This not only lifts the resistive limitation of normal state contacts, but further paves a new way to probe electron transport through a single molecule. In this work, we demonstrate the realization of superconducting SMTs involving a single C60 fullerene molecule. The last few years have seen gate-controlled Josephson supercurrents induced in the family of low dimensional carbon structures such as flakes of two-dimensional graphene and portions of one-dimensional carbon nanotubes. The present study involving a full zero-dimensionnal fullerene completes the picture.