Superconducting rectifier based on the asymmetric surface barrier effect

The rectifier consists of a superconducting strip placed in an external perpendicular magnetic field. By roughing one of the edges parallel to the current the conditions for vortex entry become different on both edges of the sample. An advantage of this device is that the sign of the rectified signal is determined by the direction of the applied field. Our estimates show that the rectifying effect in such a structure may be observed up to MHz frequencies and that it is able to rectify the currents up to ampere when using low temperature superconductors.