The diamond superconducting quantum interference device.

Mandal, Soumen; Bautze, Tobias; Williams, Oliver A; Naud, Cécile; Bustarret, Étienne; Omnès, Franck; Rodière, Pierre; Meunier, Tristan et al. · ACS Nano · 2011

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Diamond is an electrical insulator in its natural form. However, when doped with boron above a critical level (∼0.25 atom %) it can be rendered superconducting at low temperatures with high critical fields. Here we present the realization of a micrometer-scale superconducting quantum interference device (μ-SQUID) made from nanocrystalline boron-doped diamond (BDD) films. Our results demonstrate that μ-SQUIDs made from superconducting diamond can be operated in magnetic fields as large as 4 T independent of the field direction. This is a decisive step toward the detection of quantum motion in a diamond-based nanomechanical oscillator.