Supercurrents in lead—copper—-lead sandwiches

Abstract

The resistance of thin-film lead-copper-lead junctions has been studied with the lead in the superconducting state. The junctions will sustain a supercurrent up to a certain critical value above which a voltage appears, rising smoothly from zero as the current is increased. The effect of a magnetic field upon the critical current has demonstrated that the sandwiches behave phenomenologically as Josephson junctions. The critical current rises rapidly as the temperature is lowered, decreases exponentially with increasing thickness of copper and increases with increase of the mean free path of the copper. A simplified version of the de Gennes theory of the proximity effect has been used to account quantitatively for this behaviour. The experiments show that the coherence length of the paired electrons in the copper increases as the temperature decreases, implying that thermal fluctuations govern the decay of the pairs. From the value of the decay length, the interaction parameter in copper is estimated to lie between +0·06 and +0·14. The properties of these junctions are compared with those of junctions with insulating barriers.