Designing a Better Superconductor with Geometric Frustration

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Superconductors contain tiny tornadoes of supercurrent, called vortex filaments, that create resistance when they move. This affects the way superconductors carry a current.

But a magnet-controlled “switch” in superconductor configuration provides unprecedented flexibility in managing the location of vortex filaments, altering the properties of the superconductor, according to a new paper in Nature Nanotechnology.

“We work on superconductors and how to make them better for applications,” said Boldizsar Janko, professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Notre Dame and co-corresponding author on the paper. “One of the major problems in superconductor technology is that most of them have these filaments, these tiny tornadoes of supercurrent. When these move, then you have resistance.”