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Published March 15, 1998 | Published
Journal Article Open

Modeling the power flow in normal conductor-insulator-superconductor junctions

Abstract

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 MS 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.

Additional Information

© 1998 American Institute of Physics. Received 27 October 1997; accepted 26 November 1997. This work was supported in part by the Center for Particle Astrophysics, an NSF Science and Technology Center, under Cooperative Agreement AST-912005, and by IGPPLLNL Grant No. AP96-41. J. Jochum is partly supported by a Feodor-Lynen Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

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