Quantized conductance and its correlation to the supercurrent in a nanowire connected to superconductors

Nano Lett. 2013 Aug 14;13(8):3614-7. doi: 10.1021/nl4014265. Epub 2013 Aug 2.

Abstract

We report conductance and supercurrent of InAs nanowires coupled to Al-superconducting electrodes with short channel lengths and good Ohmic contacts. The nanowires are suspended 15 nm above a local gate electrode. The charge density in the nanowires can be controlled by a small change in the gate voltage. For large negative gate voltages, the number of conducting channels is reduced gradually, and we observe a stepwise decrease of both conductance and critical current before the conductance vanishes completely.