Modeling the power flow in normal conductor-insulator-superconductor junctions
- Center for Particle Astrophysics, University of California at Berkeley, 301 Le Conte Hall, Berkeley, California 94720 (United States)
- Physics and Space Technology Directorate, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, P.O. Box 808, L-418, Livermore, California 94551 (United States)
- Thin Film Laboratory, Department of Physics and Astrophysics, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway, San Francisco, California 94132 (United States)
Normal conductor-insulator-superconductor (NIS) junctions promise to be interesting for x-ray and phonon sensing applications, in particular due to the expected self-cooling of the N electrode by the tunneling current. Such cooling would enable the operation of the active element of the sensor below the cryostat temperature and at a correspondingly higher sensitivity. It would also allow the use of NIS junctions as microcoolers. At present, this cooling has not been realized in large area junctions (suitable for a number of detector applications). In this article, we discuss a detailed modeling of the heat flow in such junctions; we show how the heat flow into the normal electrode by quasiparticle back-tunneling and phonon absorption from quasiparticle pair recombination can overcompensate the cooling power. This provides a microscopic explanation of the self-heating effects we observe in our large area NIS junctions. The model suggests a number of possible solutions. {copyright} {ital 1998 American Institute of Physics.}
- OSTI ID:
- 570280
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 83, Issue 6; Other Information: PBD: Mar 1998
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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