High-temperature superconducting nano-meanders made by ion irradiation

In this article, we report on the fabrication of very long YBa2Cu3O7 nanowires in a meander shape patterned in a CeO2-capped thin film by high-energy oxygen ion irradiation. DC and RF characterizations outline the good superconducting properties of the nanowires whose geometry approaches the one used in single photon detectors. Their inductance, which mainly sets the maximum speed of these devices, has been measured on a wide range of temperature by mean of a resonant method. The extracted values are in agreement with the ones calculated from the geometry of the meanders and from the known London penetration depth in YBa2Cu3O7 thin films.