Whiskers

Whiskers are tiny superconducting wires:

Magnetic properties are studied by placing a whisker on a Hall bar array (Hall Bar Size is 1 or 2 µm):

The magnetic field profiles produced by vortices entering the whiskers were studied.

Main results:

Sawtooth Profile of magnetisation curve, indicating compression of the votex structure.

Local magnetisation loops: above 5 K surface barriers dominate the hysteresis, below - bulk pinning is the dominant force.