Impact of edge-barrier pinning in superconducting thin films

It has been suggested that edge-barrier pinning might cause the critical current density (J(c)) in bridged superconducting films to increase. Subsequent work indicated that this edge-barrier effect does not impact bridges larger than 1 mu m. However, we provide a theoretical assessment with supporting experimental data suggesting edge-barrier pinning can significantly enhance J(c) for bridges of a few microns or even tens of microns thus skewing any comparisons among institutions. As such, when reporting flux pinning and superconductor processing improvements for J(c) comparisons, the width of the sample has to be taken into consideration as is currently done with film thickness. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3529945]