Superconducting spin valve effect in Co/Pb/Co heterostructures with insulating interlayers.

We report the superconducting properties of Co/Pb/Co heterostructures with thin insulating interlayers. The main specific feature of these structures is the intentional oxidation of both superconductor/ferromagnet (S/F) interfaces. We study the variation of the critical temperature of our systems due to switching between parallel and antiparallel configurations of the magnetizations of the two magnetic layers. Common knowledge suggests that this spin valve effect, which is due to the S/F proximity effect, is most pronounced in the case of perfect metallic contacts at the interfaces. Nevertheless, in our structures with intentionally deteriorated interfaces, we observed a significant full spin valve effect. A shift of the superconducting transition temperature Tc by switching the mutual orientation of the magnetizations of the two ferromagnetic Co layers from antiparallel to parallel amounted to ΔTc = 0.2 K at the optimal thickness of the superconducting Pb layer. Our findings verify the so far unconfirmed earlier results by Deutscher and Meunier on an F1/S/F2 heterostructure with oxidized interlayers [Deutscher, G.; Meunier, F. Phys. Rev. Lett. 1969, 22, 395. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.22.395] and suggest an alternative route to optimize the performance of superconducting spin valves.

Increasing the performance of a superconducting spin valve using a Heusler alloy.

We have studied superconducting properties of spin-valve thin-layer heterostructures CoO x /F1/Cu/F2/Cu/Pb in which the ferromagnetic F1 layer was made of Permalloy while for the F2 layer we have taken a specially prepared film of the Heusler alloy Co2Cr1-x Fe x Al with a small degree of spin polarization of the conduction band. The heterostructures demonstrate a significant superconducting spin-valve effect, i.e., a complete switching on and off of the superconducting current flowing through the system by manipulating the mutual orientations of the magnetization of the F1 and F2 layers. The magnitude of the effect is doubled in comparison with the previously studied analogous multilayers with the F2 layer made of the strong ferromagnet Fe. Theoretical analysis shows that a drastic enhancement of the switching effect is due to a smaller exchange field in the heterostructure coming from the Heusler film as compared to Fe. This enables to approach an almost ideal theoretical magnitude of the switching in the Heusler-based multilayer with a F2 layer thickness of ca. 1 nm.