Anisotropic pinning in Nb thin films with triangular pinning arrays

Abstract

A superconducting thin film with regular triangular arrays has been fabricated to explore the anisotropic vortex pinning behavior. We found that the critical currents for these films depend strongly on the current directions. Some interesting temperature-dependent phenomena are observed and discussed. We also made molecular dynamic simulations to study the dynamics of the vortex motion. The simulation results confirm the anisotropic features we found in the experiments. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.