  Semiconducting diode with nonreciprocal transport effect underlies the
cornerstone of contemporary integrated circuits (ICs) technology. Due to
isotropic superconducting properties and the lack of breaking of inversion
symmetry for conventional s-wave superconductors, such a superconducting peer
is absent. Recently, a series of superconducting structures, including
superconducting superlattice and quantum-material-based superconducting
Josephson junction, have exhibited a superconducting diode effect in terms of
polarity-dependent critical current. However, due to complex structures, these
composite systems are not able to construct large-scale integrated
superconducting circuits. Here, we demonstrated the minimal superconducting
electric component-superconducting nanowire-based diode with a nonreciprocal
transport effect under a perpendicular magnetic field, in which the
superconducting to normal metallic phase transition relies on the polarity and
amplitude of the bias current. Our nanowire diodes can be reliably operated
nearly at all temperatures below the critical temperature, and the
rectification efficiency at 2 K can be more than 24%. Moreover, the
superconducting nanowire diode is able to rectify both square wave and sine
wave signals without any distortion. Combining the superconducting
nanowire-based diodes and transistors, superconducting nanowires hold the
possibility to construct novel low-dissipation superconducting ICs.

Superconductivity;Applied Physics