Search results for "SUPERCONDUCTIVITY"

Applications of tunnel junctions in low-dimensional nanostructures

2009

This thesis concentrates on studies of AlOx based tunnel junctions and their feasibility for cooling, thermometry and strain sensing in suspended nanostructures. The main result of the thesis is cooling of one dimensional phonon modes of a suspended nanowire with normal metal insulator superconductor (NIS) tunnel junctions. Simultaneous cooling of both electrons and phonons was achieved, and the lowest phonon temperature reached in the system was 42 mK with an initial temperature of 100 mK. In addition, suspended devices show cooling still at a bath temperature of 600 mK. The observed thermal transport characteristics show, that the heat flow is limited by the scattering of phonons at the b…

Coherence properties in superconducting flux qubits

The research work discussed in this thesis deals with the study of superconducting Josephson qubits. Superconducting qubits are solid-state artificial atoms which are based on lithographically defined Josephson tunnel junctions properties. When sufficiently cooled, these superconducting devices exhibit quantized states of charge, flux or junction phase depending on their design parameters. This allows to observe coherent evolutions of their states. The results presented can be divided into two parts. In a first part we investigate operations of superconducting qubits based on the quantum coherence in superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUID). We explain experimental data which ha…

Applications and non-idealities of submicron Al–AlOx–Nb tunnel junctions

2016

We have developed a technique to fabricate sub-micron, 0.6µm×0.6µm Al-AlOx-Nb tunnel junctions using a standard e-beam resist, angle evaporation and double oxidation of the tunneling barrier, resulting in high quality niobium, as determined by the the high measured values of the critical temperature TC ∼ 7.5 K and the gap ∆ ∼ 1.3 meV. The devices show great promise for local nanoscale thermometry in the temperature range 1 - 7.5 K. Electrical characterization of the junctions was performed at sub-Kelvin temperatures both with and without an external magnetic field, which was used to suppress superconductivity in Al and thus bring the junction into a normal-metal-insulator-superconductor (NI…