Hybrid high-temperature superconductor semiconductor optoelectronic devices.

The interaction of light with semiconductor-superconductor structures has recently emerged as a new interdisciplinary field of superconducting optoelectronics with demonstrations of light emission from hybrid light-emitting diodes enhanced by the superconducting state, and various proposals for novel lasers and quantum light sources. These hybrid devices have also proven useful in nonlinear electronics and infrared detection taking advantage of the superconducting gap in the tunneling spectrum.

However, all previously studied semiconductor-superconductor devices were based on conventional low-Tc superconductors, requiring extreme cooling. We demonstrated a hybrid high-Tc-superconductor-semiconductor tunnel diode constructed from Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O_8+δ combined with bulk GaAs or with a GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well, which shows excess voltage and nonlinearity – in good agreement with theoretical predictions for a d-wave superconductor-normal material junction.