Expanding the operational temperature window of a superconducting spin valve

Abstract

To increase the efficiency of the superconducting spin valve (SSV), special attention should be paid to the choice of ferromagnetic materials for the F1/F2/S SSV multilayer. Here, we report the preparation and the superconducting properties of the SSV heterostructures where Pb is used as the superconducting S layer. In the magnetic part of the structure, we use the same starting material, the Heusler alloy Co${}_2$Cr${}_{1-x}$Fe${}_x$Al${}_y$, for both F1 and F2 layers. We utilize the tunability of the magnetic properties of this alloy, which, depending on the deposition conditions, forms either an almost fully spin-polarized half-metallic F1 layer or a weakly ferromagnetic F2 layer. We demonstrate that the combination of the distinct properties of these two layers boosts the generation of the long-range triplet component of the superconducting condensate in the fabricated SSV structures and yields superior values of the triplet spin-valve effect of more than 1 K and of the operational temperature window of the SSV up to 0.6 K.

9 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Evidence for Triplet Superconductivity in a Superconductor-Ferromagnet Spin Valve
• Superconducting triplet spin valve
• Controlled suppression of superconductivity by the generation of polarized Cooper pairs in spin valve structures
• Magnetization-control and transfer of spin-polarized Cooper pairs into a half-metal manganite
• Proximity effects and triplet correlations in Ferromagnet/Ferromagnet/Superconductor nanostructures
• Superconducting spin-valve effect in heterostructures with ferromagnetic Heusler alloy layers
• Effective spin-flip scattering in diffusive superconducting proximity systems with magnetic disorder

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Superconducting spin valve effect in Fe/Si${}_3$N${}_4$/Pb/Si${}_3$N${}_4$/Fe heterostructures