Abstract. We describe two electrochemical self-assembly processes for producing highly ordered quasi-periodic arrays of quantum dots on a surface. The advantages of these techniques are: (i) they are 'gentle' and do not cause radiation damage to nanostructures unlike beam lithography, (ii) they have high throughput and are amenable to mass production unlike direct-write lithography, (iii) structures can be delineated on non-planar substrates, and (iv) the techniques are potentially orders of magnitude cheaper to implement than conventional nanosynthesis. Samples produced by these techniques have been characterized by microscopy, optical and transport measurements, Auger and x-ray. These measurements reveal intriguing properties of the nanostructures. In this paper, we describe our initial results and show the promise of such techniques for low-cost and high-yield nanosynthesis.

Optical measurements indicate an unconventional superconducting phase in the Bi/Ni bilayer that breaks time-reversal symmetry.

No abstract

Superconductivity (SC) is one of the most intriguing physical phenomena in nature. Nucleation of SC has long been considered highly unfavorable if not impossible near ferromagnetism, in low dimensionality and, above all, out of non-superconductor. Here we report observation of SC with 𝑇C near 4 K in Ni/Bi bilayers that defies all known paradigms of superconductivity, where neither ferromagnetic Ni film nor rhombohedra Bi film is superconducting in isolation. This highly unusual SC is independent of the growth order (Ni/Bi or Bi/Ni), but highly sensitive to the constituent layer thicknesses. Most importantly, the SC, distinctively non-𝑠 pairing, is triggered from, but does not occur at, the Bi/Ni interface. Using point contact Andreev reflection, we show evidences that the unique SC, naturally compatible with magnetism, is triplet p-wave pairing.