Thermoelectric effects in superconducting nanostructures

We study thermoelectric effects in superconducting nanobridges and demonstrate that the magnitude of these effects can be comparable or even larger than that for a macroscopic circuit. It is shown that a large gradient of the electron temperature can be realistically created on a nanoscale and the masking effects due to spurious magnetic fields can be minimised in nanostructures. For these reasons, nanodevices can provide an interesting possibility to study the thermoelectric effect in superconductors. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2006