Energy structure of hybrid Semiconductor-superconductor nanowire Based devices

Materials possessing superconducting properties are highly sought after due to their potential technological applications. Much of the work has focused on utilising a thin insulating barrier separating a pair of superconducting electrodes, a Josephson junction, as a workhorse in the field of superconducting based quantumcomputation. Yet such structures are highly sensitive to their surrounding environment. Furthermore the associated energy scales, Josephson coupling and charging energy, are set by the junction geometry. Replacing the insulating barrier with a semiconducting material has the significant advantage of offering tunable energy scales with the aid of an applied electric field. Due to recent advancement in material development, hybrid combinations of superconductors and semiconductors have made it possible to devise various architectures. The present thesis focuses on investigating Josephson junctions and Cooper-pair transistors formed from semiconducting nanowires covered by a superconducting layer.