Electrical Transport Study of Patterned Lateral Niobium-Permalloy Junctions

In order to investigate the interplay between magnetic domain walls and superconductivity we study the electrical transport property of lateral Nb-permalloy-Nb junctions where the permalloy thickness is varied from 50 to 90 nm. Magnetic force microscopy images confirm the presence of domain walls in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on magnetics 2008-11, Vol.44 (11), p.2737-2740
Main Authors: Bakaul, S.R., Kebin Li, Guchang Han, Yihong Wu
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Conductance
Cross-disciplinary physics: materials science
rheology
Crossed Andreev reflection
domain wall
Domain walls
Electrical junctions
Electrodes
Exact sciences and technology
Ferromagnetism
Josephson junctions
Magnetic domain walls
Magnetic fields
Magnetic force microscopy
Magnetic forces
Magnetic properties
Magnetism
Materials science
odd triplet superconductivity
Other topics in materials science
Permalloy
Physics
Reflection
Superconducting transition temperature
Superconductivity
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Summary:In order to investigate the interplay between magnetic domain walls and superconductivity we study the electrical transport property of lateral Nb-permalloy-Nb junctions where the permalloy thickness is varied from 50 to 90 nm. Magnetic force microscopy images confirm the presence of domain walls in the ferromagnetic portion between the two superconducting electrodes for samples with permalloy thickness of 60, 70 and 90 nm. Below superconducting transition temperature, the zero bias conductance (ZBC) for these samples shows a sharp reduction in the magnetic field range of 0 to 0.15 T and after that it stays almost at a constant level until a high field is applied. The phenomenon is attributed to domain wall assisted crossed Andreev reflection (CAR) and/or long range triplet component (LRTC) of superconductivity. On the contrary, the decreasing trend of ZBC at low field is absent for the sample with 50 nm thick NiFe which indicates that the conductance contribution from CAR and/or LRTC is absent in this sample. This is presumably due the fact that the permalloy in the gap region for this sample is in a single domain state. A quantitative analysis for conductance contribution from domain wall assisted CAR is provided.
ISSN:0018-9464
1941-0069
DOI:10.1109/TMAG.2008.2001503