Dramatic enhancement of superconductivity in single-crystalline nanowire arrays of Sn.

Sn is a classical superconductor on the border between type I and type II with critical temperature of 3.7 K. We show that its critical parameters can be dramatically increased if it is brought in the form of loosely bound bundles of thin nanowires. The specific heat displays a pronounced double phase transition at 3.7 K and 5.5 K, which we attribute to the inner ‘bulk’ contribution of the nanowires and to the surface contribution, respectively. The latter is visible only because of the large volume fraction of the surface layer in relation to the bulk volume. The upper transition coincides with the onset of the resistive transition, while zero resistance is gradually approached below the lower transition. In contrast to the low critical field Hc = 0.03 T of Sn in its bulk form, a magnetic field of more than 3 T is required to fully restore the normal state.