CHAPTER 16: Superconductivity in Nanostructured Boron-doped Diamond and its Application to Device Fabrication

The widely known allotropes of carbon are graphite, diamond and amorphous carbon. Out of these, in its natural form graphite is an electrical conductor, while the other two are insulators. Among the insulating forms, diamond is of particular interest to many professionals because of its exceptional hardness and brilliance. Apart from that, diamond also becomes an interesting material when doped with boron. Above a critical doping concentration doped diamond shows superconductivity with a high critical field. In this chapter we will present our work on nanofabricated boron-doped diamond. We show that diamond is an excellent candidate for making quantum devices, like SQUIDs, which retain its operational properties at magnetic fields as high as 4 T, independent of field direction. We will also present results that demonstrate that this material is also an excellent candidate for making superconducting nanomechanical systems.