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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen
TT 19: Superconductivity: Poster Session
TT 19.29: Poster
Monday, March 7, 2016, 15:00–18:00, Poster D
Boosting the superconducting spin valve effect in a metallic superconductor/ferromagnet heterostructure — •Pavel Leksin1,2, Andrey Kamashev2, Joachim Schumann1, Vladislav Kataev1, Jürgen Thomas1, Bernd Büchner1,3, and Ilgiz Garifullin2 — 1Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research IFW Dresden, D-01171 Dresden, Germany — 2Zavoisky Physical-Technical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, 420029 Kazan, Russia — 3Technical University Dresden, D-01062 Dresden, Germany
We demonstrate a crucial role of the morphology of the superconducting layer for the operation of the multilayer S/F1/F2 spin valve. For that, we studied two types of superconducting spin valve heterostructures, with a rough and with a smooth superconducting layer, respectively, with transmission electron microscopy in combination with transport and magnetic characterization. We have found that the quality of the S/F interface is not critical for the S/F proximity effect as regards the suppression of the critical temperature of the S layer. However, it appears to be of a paramount importance for the performance of the S/F1/F2 spin valve. The magnitude of the conventional superconducting spin valve effect significantly increases, when the morphology of the S layer is changed from the type of overlapping islands to a smooth one. We attribute this drastic effect to a homogenization of the Green function of the superconducting condensate over the S/F interface in the S/F1/F2 valve with a smooth S layer surface.