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Anomalously Weak Cooper Pair-breaking by Exchange Energy in Ferromagnet/Superconductor Bilayers

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Abstract

We report the superconducting transition temperature T c versus thickness d F of Ferromagnet/Superconductor (F/S) bilayers, where F is a strong 3d ferromagnet (Ni, Ni 0.81 Fe 0.19 (Permalloy), Co 0.5Fe 0.5) and S = Nb, taken from superfluid density measurements rather than resistivity. By regrouping the many physical parameters that appear in theory, we show that the effective exchange energy is determined from the F film thickness d F where T c versus d F begins to flatten out. Using this rearranged theory, we conclude 1) the effective exchange energy, E e x , is about 15 times smaller than measured by ARPES and five times smaller than deduced in previous studies similar to ours; 2) the dirty-limit coherence length, ξ F , for Cooper pairs in F is larger than the electron mean free path, ℓ F ; and 3) the 3d-F/Nb interface is enough of a barrier that Cooper pairs typically must hit it several times before getting through. The Py/Nb and CoFe/Nb interfaces are more transparent than the Ni/Nb interface.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by NSF grant DMR-0805227. We acknowledge useful discussions with Jan Aarts, Norman Birge, Julia Meyer, and Christoph Strunk.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    T. R. Lemberger, M. J. Hinton, Jie Yong, J. M. Lucy, A. J. Hauser & F. Y. Yang

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  1. T. R. Lemberger
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  2. M. J. Hinton
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  3. Jie Yong
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  4. J. M. Lucy
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  5. A. J. Hauser
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  6. F. Y. Yang
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Correspondence to M. J. Hinton.

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Lemberger, T.R., Hinton, M.J., Yong, J. et al. Anomalously Weak Cooper Pair-breaking by Exchange Energy in Ferromagnet/Superconductor Bilayers. J Supercond Nov Magn 27, 2249–2255 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10948-014-2591-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10948-014-2591-3

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