Millikelvin cooling by heavy-fermion-based tunnel junctions
- School of Engineering, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 3AA (United Kingdom)
- Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL (United Kingdom)
This paper addresses a high-performance electron-tunneling cooler based on a novel heavy-fermion/insulator/superconductor junction for millikelvin cooling applications. We show that the cooling performance of an electronic tunneling refrigerator could be significantly improved using a heavy-fermion metal to replace the normal metal in a conventional normal metal/insulator/superconductor junction. The calculation, based on typical parameters, indicates that, for a bath temperature of 300 mK, the minimum cooling temperature of an electron tunneling refrigerator is reduced from around 170 mK to below 50 mK if a heavy-fermion metal is employed in place of the normal metal. The improved cooling is attributed to an enhancement in electron tunneling due to the existence of a resonant density of states at the Fermi level.
- OSTI ID:
- 22493102
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 118, Issue 24; Other Information: (c) 2015 Author(s); Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0021-8979
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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