Spin-polarized tunneling in critically disordered Be-Al bilayers

• Published in: Physical review research 2021-05, Vol.3 (2), p.023141, Article 023141
• Main Authors: Womack, F. N., Adams, P. W., Catelani, G.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 2643-1564; 2643-1564
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.023141

We report spin-polarized tunneling density of states measurements of the proximity modulated superconductor-insulator transition in ultrathin Be-Al bilayers. The bilayer samples consisted of a Be film of varying thickness, d_{Be}=0.8–4.5nm, on which a 1 nm thick capping layer of Al was deposited. Detailed measurements of the Zeeman splitting of the BCS coherence peaks in samples with sheet resistances R∼h/4e^{2} revealed a superlinear Zeeman shift near the critical field. Our data suggests that critically disordered samples have a broad distribution of gap energies and that only the higher portion of the distribution survives as the Zeeman critical field is approached. This produces a counterintuitive field dependence in which the gap apparently increases with increasing parallel field.