The maximum current (critical current) a type-II superconductor can transmit
without energy loss is limited by the motion of the quantized magnetic flux
penetrating into a superconductor. Introducing nanoscale holes into a
superconducting film has been long pursued as a promising way to increase the
critical current. So far the critical current enhancement was found to be
mostly limited to low magnetic fields. Here we experimentally investigate the
critical currents of superconducting films with a conformal array of nanoscale
holes that have non-uniform density while preserving the local ordering. We
find that the conformal array of nanoscle holes provides a more significant
critical current enhancement at high magnetic fields. The better performance
can be attributed to its arching effect that not only gives rise to the
gradient in hole-density for pinning vortices with a wide range of densities
but also prevent vortex channeling occurring in samples with a regular lattice
of holes.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
