The CC0 Public Domain is a public domain.
The Josephson effect occurs when two regions are separated by a strip of non-superconducting material. Novel implications for spintronic applications arise if the spacer material is a half-metal ferromagnet. An international team has designed a material system that exhibits a long-range Josephson effect. Here, the regions of YBa2Cu3O7 are separated by a half-metallic, ferromagnetic Manganite.
The researchers were able to demonstrate a Josephson effect with a long range by showing the presence of a supercurrent circulating through the Manganite.
It's extremely rare: Triplett superconductivity.
The scientists explored another interesting property with profound consequences for spintronic applications. In superconductors, the electrons pair together. The stabilization of superconductivity is adversely affected by the fact that most of the materials have electrons with opposite spin. The international team uses a half-ferromagnet that only has one spin type electron allowed to circulate. The discovery of a supercurrent within this material implies that the Cooper pairs of this supercurrent must be composed by electrons having the same spin. It is extremely rare that this superconductivity is called triplet.
BESSY II is mapping magnetic domains.
We measured the magnetic domains at the BESSY II station. We observed wide regions that were connected by magnets. The triplet spin pairs can travel freely in these.
Superconducting currents are appealing for low-power consumption applications. The current is made of electrons with equal spins. The stability imposed by the Josephson effect could be used in spintronic applications for the transport and reading of information.
The new device makes use of ferromagnetic and superconducting components, which opens up opportunities for spintronics and quantum computing.
D.nchez-Manzano et al., Extremely long-range, high-temperature Josephsoncoupling across a half-metallic ferromagnet, Nature Materials, is available. There is a DOI of 10.1038/s41563-021-01162-5.
Nature Materials Journal information.
Green information technologies: superconductivity meets spintronics was retrieved fromphys.org on December 2, 2021.
The document is copyrighted. Any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research cannot be reproduced without written permission. The content is not intended to be used for anything other than information purposes.
