Superconductivity and ferromagnetism are two mutually antagonistic states in condensed matter. Research on the interplay between these two competing orderings sheds light not only on the cause of various quantum phenomena in strongly correlated systems but also on the general mechanism of superconductivity. Here we report on the observation of the electronic entanglement between superconducting and ferromagnetic states in hydrogenated boron-doped nanodiamond films, which have a superconducting transition temperature T ∼ 3 K and a Curie temperature T > 400 K. In spite of the high T, our nanodiamond films demonstrate a decrease in the temperature dependence of magnetization below 100 K, in correspondence to an increase in the temperature dependence of resistivity. These anomalous magnetic and electrical transport properties reveal the presence of an intriguing precursor phase, in which spin fluctuations intervene as a result of the interplay between the two antagonistic states. Furthermore, the observations of high-temperature ferromagnetism, giant positive magnetoresistance, and anomalous Hall effect bring attention to the potential applications of our superconducting ferromagnetic nanodiamond films in magnetoelectronics, spintronics, and magnetic field sensing.

In the presence of disorder, superconductivity exhibits short-range characteristics linked to localized Cooper pairs which are responsible for anomalous phase transitions and the emergence of quantum states such as the bosonic insulating state. Complementary to well-studied homogeneously disordered superconductors, superconductor-normal hybrid arrays provide tunable realizations of the degree of granular disorder for studying anomalous quantum phase transitions. Here, we investigate the superconductor-bosonic dirty metal transition in disordered nanodiamond arrays as a function of the dispersion of intergrain spacing, which ranges from angstroms to micrometers. By monitoring the evolved superconducting gaps and diminished coherence peaks in the single-quasiparticle density of states, we link the destruction of the superconducting state and the emergence of bosonic dirty metallic state to breaking of the global phase coherence and persistence of the localized Cooper pairs. The observed resistive bosonic phase transitions are well modeled using a series-parallel circuit in the framework of bosonic confinement and coherence.

Many disordered superconducting films exhibit smeared tunneling spectra with evident in-gap states. We demonstrated that the tunneling density of states in ultrathin MoC films is gapless and can be described by the Dynes version of the BCS density of states with a strong broadening parameter  accounting for the suppression of coherence peaks and increased in-gap states. The thinner the film, the lower the Tc and the superconducting energy gap  and the larger the  MoC films of 3 nm thickness deposited simultaneously on silicon and sapphire substrates reveal very similar scalar disorder, evidenced by the equal sheet resistance, but exhibit different superconducting characteristics of Tc,  and  suggesting that pair breaking responsible for the dissipation channel and the suppression of superconductivity originates on the film-substrate interface. It indicates that sapphire is a stronger pair breaker. Interface pair breaking can be operative in other cases as well.I.