Enhanced superconductivity in aluminum-based hyperbolic metamaterials

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that aluminum-based hyperbolic metamaterials can enhance superconductivity, achieving higher critical temperatures and better transport properties than previous designs, with implications for other superconductors.

Contribution

It introduces an Al/Al2O3 hyperbolic metamaterial design that enhances Tc and improves transport properties, surpassing previous core-shell metamaterials.

Findings

Tc is tripled in Al/Al2O3 hyperbolic metamaterials.

Transport and magnetic properties are superior to core-shell metamaterials.

Potential to enhance superconductivity in other simple superconductors.

Abstract

One of the most important goals of condensed matter physics is materials by design, i.e. the ability to reliably predict and design materials with a set of desired properties. A striking example is the deterministic enhancement of the superconducting properties of materials. Recent experiments have demonstrated that the metamaterial approach is capable of achieving this goal, such as tripling the critical temperature Tc in Al-Al2O3 epsilon near zero (ENZ) core-shell metamaterial superconductors. However, transport properties of such metamaterials remained much worse compared to conventional superconductors. Here, we demonstrate that an Al/Al2O3 hyperbolic metamaterial geometry is capable of a similar Tc enhancement, while having superior transport and magnetic properties compared to the core-shell metamaterial superconductors. This result opens up numerous new possibilities for metamaterial enhancement of Tc in other practically important simple superconductors, such as niobium and MgB2. It also indicates that the recently discovered hyperbolic properties of high Tc superconductors may play considerable role in superconductivity enhancement in cuprates.