Meissner effect measurement of single indium particle using a customized on-chip nano-scale superconducting quantum...

As many emergent phenomena of superconductivity appear on a smaller scale and at lower dimension, commercial magnetic property measurement systems (MPMSs) no longer provide the sensitivity necessary to study the Meissner effect of small superconductors. The nano-scale superconducting quantum interference device (nano-SQUID) is considered one of the most sensitive magnetic sensors for the magnetic characterization of mesoscopic or microscopic samples. Here, we develop a customized on-chip nano-SQUID measurement system based on a pulsed current biasing method. The noise performance of our system is approximately 4.6 × 10^-17 emu/Hz^1/2, representing an improvement of 9 orders of magnitude compared with that of a commercial MPMS (~10^-8 emu/Hz^1/2). Furthermore, we demonstrate the measurement of the Meissner effect of a single indium (In) particle (of 47 μm in diameter) using our on-chip nano-SQUID system. The system enables the observation of the prompt superconducting transition of the Meissner effect of a single In particle, thereby providing more accurate characterization of the critical field H_c and temperature T_c. In addition, the retrapping field H_re as a function of temperature T of single In particle shows disparate behavior from that of a large ensemble.