Superconducting electronics: promising approaches and related challenges

by Prof. Angelo Di Bernardo (University of Salerno and University of Konstanz)

Thursday 14 Nov 2024, 10:00 → 11:00 Europe/Zurich

SZ-WBGB/019

The encoding and processing of digital information with superconducting circuits has raised increasing interest over the past decades because it can offer low power consumption, fast operating speeds and ease of interface with other superconducting devices like superconducting single photon detectors and superconducting qubits.

Several approaches and material platforms have been proposed and tested for the realization of superconducting circuits, to determine whether they can offer better peformance than exisisting conventional metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) architectures or already-exisisting superconducting logics like single flux quantum. These approaches include superconducting spintronics [1], where superconductor/ferromagnet (S/F) hybrids are used for the generation of spin-polarised Cooper pairs of electrons [2], and three-terminal superconducting devices [3], where a gate voltage is applied to control the supercurrent flowing in a narrow superconducting constriction and set the device logic state.

In this talk, I will review the main progress done in these research fields and discuss the material platforms that hold the greatest potential for their future development [4-6]. I will also outline the main challenges that have to be overcome, for each of the approaches discussed, toward the realisation of superconducting circuits that can be scaled up and fully integrated in large-scale computing and quantum computing architectures.

 

References

1. J. Linder, J. Robinson, Nat. Phys. 11, 307 (2015).

2. A. Di Bernardo, Z. Salman, X. L. Wang et al., Phys. Rev. X 5, 041021 (2015).

3. L. Ruf, E. Scheer, A. Di Bernardo, ACS Nano 18, 20600 (2024).

4. A. Spuri, D. Nikolic, S. Chakraborty, .. A. Di Bernardo, Phys. Rev. Res. 6, L012046 (2024).

5. H. Alpern, Μ. Αmundsen, R. Hartmann, .., A. Di Bernardo, Phys. Rev. Mater. 5, 114801 (2021).

6. L. Ruf, C. Puglia, T. Elalaily, .., A. Di Bernardo, Appl. Phys. Rev. 11, 041314 (2024).