Realisation of de Gennes$'$ Absolute Superconducting Switch with a Heavy Metal Interface

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates an absolute superconducting switch using EuS/Au/Nb/EuS structures, achieving complete suppression of superconductivity through magnetic control, enabled by a strong spin-mixing conductance at the EuS/Au interface.

Contribution

It introduces a novel $EuS/Au/Nb/EuS$ structure that achieves near 100% switching of superconductivity, surpassing previous partial effects, due to enhanced spin-mixing conductance.

Findings

Superconductivity is fully quenched in the structure at low temperatures.

The spin-mixing conductance at EuS/Au interface is crucial for the effect.

The switch operates with a nearly 100% critical temperature difference.

Abstract

In 1966, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes proposed a non-volatile mechanism for switching superconductivity on and off in a magnetic device. This involved a superconductor (S) sandwiched between ferromagnetic (F) insulators in which the net magnetic exchange field could be controlled through the magnetisation-orientation of the F layers. Because superconducting switches are attractive for a range of applications, extensive studies have been carried out on $F/S/F$ structures. Although these have demonstrated a sensitivity of the superconducting critical temperature ($T_{c}$) to parallel (P) and antiparallel (AP) magnetisation-orientations of the F layers, corresponding shifts in $T_c$ (i.e., ${\Delta}T_c = T_{c,AP} - T_{c,P}$) are lower than predicted with ${\Delta}T_c$ only a small fraction of $T_{c,AP}$, precluding the development of applications. Here, we report $EuS/Au/Nb/EuS$ structures where EuS is an insulating ferromagnet, Nb is a superconductor and Au is a heavy metal. For P magnetisations, the superconducting state in this structure is quenched down to the lowest measured temperature of 20 mK meaning that ${\Delta}T_c/T_{c,AP}$ is practically 1. The key to this so-called absolute switching effect is a sizable spin-mixing conductance at the $EuS/Au$ interface which ensures a robust magnetic proximity effect, unlocking the potential of $F/S/F$ switches for low power electronics.