Theoretical investigation of the transition temperature of dirty proximity-effect sandwich systems

✍ Scribed by W. Haberkorn; J. Richter

• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 1979
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 486 KB
• Volume: 35
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-2291
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00117900

✦ Synopsis

The influence of impurities and of an interface barrier on the critical temperature of a superconductor-normal (SN) metal sandwich is studied in the Cooper limit. The investigations are based on new equations which allow us to deal with inhomogeneous, dirty superconducting systems near the critical temperature. In contrast with previous treatments, it is shown that at finite film thicknesses, Tc is not only dependent on the N to S thickness ratio, but also on the absolute thickness values, the transmission probability of the interface barrier, and the mean free electron paths. Our results permit the determination of the stay probabilities of McMillan ' s tunneling model and the effective length of de Gennes' extended boundary condition on the integral kernel which determines To. Finally, it is shown how the conventional Cooper limit result for Tc by de Gennes is approached.