Unnecessary Roughness??


Read this one:

http://www.physorg.com/news6481.html

Why would corrugated roughness in the thin layers of a superconductor
increase its current-carrying capacity? Is it possible that this
irregularity/roughness/corrugation prevents the formation of the
magnetic vortices which can have adverse effects on superconductivity?

I'd previously read that doping of oxygen atoms into a superconductor's
lattice can produce defects in that lattice that can pin any magnetic
vortices that might form during current flow, thus mitigating their
impact against superconductivity. Is the roughness/corrugation doing
something similar?

Or if not, what else could it be doing?


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