Nanoscale electrothermal-switch superconducting diode for electrically programmable superconducting circuits

TL;DR

This paper presents a nanoscale superconducting diode with electrothermal switching that enables programmable, reconfigurable, and scalable superconducting circuits with high efficiency and in situ control.

Contribution

It introduces a gate-controlled electrothermal-switch superconducting diode that achieves dynamic inversion symmetry breaking and reconfigurability in superconducting circuits.

Findings

Diode efficiencies up to 42% and 60% in two regimes.

Electrical switching of diode polarity and on/off states.

Scalable lithography-compatible design for programmable superconducting electronics.

Abstract

Superconducting diodes enable dissipationless directional transport, yet achieving electrical tunability and scalability remains a major challenge for circuit-level integration. Here, we demonstrate an electrothermal-switch superconducting diode in which a gate-controlled nanoscale hotspot dynamically breaks inversion symmetry in a superconducting nanowire. This mechanism gives rise to two coexisting nonreciprocal transport regimes-one associated with a nonreciprocal superconducting-to-normal transition and the other with ratchet-like vortex dynamics-both originating from the same electrothermal-switch process. The diode exhibits efficiencies up to 42% and 60% for the two regimes, respectively, and can be electrically switched on, off, or reversed in polarity in situ by applying a small gate current. These capabilities enable programmable superconducting circuits that realize electrically reconfigurable full-wave and half-wave rectification. The lithography-compatible design, high performance, and gate-controlled functionality establish a scalable platform for programmable superconducting electronics and hybrid quantum systems.