Thermoelectric effects in normal metal/superconductor interface structures

✍ Scribed by J. Eom; C.-J. Chien; V. Chandrasekhar

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 312 KB
• Volume: 25
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0749-6036
• DOI: 10.1006/spmi.1999.0735

✦ Synopsis

The thermopower of Andreev interferometers, which are doubly connected loops in which one arm is a superconductor and one arm is a normal metal, oscillates as a function of magnetic field with a fundamental period corresponding to a flux quantum h/2e through the area of the loop. While the magnetoresistance of an Andreev interferometer is symmetric with respect to the magnetic field, the thermopower can be either symmetric or antisymmetric, depending on the topology of the sample. The temperature dependence of the thermopower oscillations is nonmonotonic. This nonmonotonic behavior does not appear to be related to the reentrance observed by many groups in the conductance of normal-metal/superconductor (NS) structures.