Spin polarized tunneling in large area mesas of superconducting Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+d for terahertz emission

Abstract

There is an increasing interest in science and technology of electromagnetic waves in terahertz frequency range (0.1-10 THz) because of their emerging application areas including physics, biology, chemistry, astronomy, medicine etc. The observation on generation of THz radiation emitted from lateral dimension of high temperature superconductor (HTS) Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+.. (Bi2212) and responses to THz waves increase the importance of these HTSs. Single crystal of HTS Bi2212 forms natural superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) layered junctions, which are called intrinsic Josephson junctions (IJJ). The stacks of IJJs in Bi2212 can be used such a voltage-frequency converter and their large energy gap allows the emissions at THz frequency range. Recently, it has been demonstrated that rectangular IJJ mesa structures of Bi2212 can be used as a source of continuous, coherent and polarized THz radiation. It was shown that all THz emitting mesas are below a certain underdoped level, which has relatively small critical current in contrast to optimally doped and overdoped Bi2212. In this work, rectangular Au/Co/Au/Bi2212 mesa structures with large areas and high thicknesses were fabricated on as-grown Bi2212 single crystals using standard photolithograph and Ar ion beam etching techniques. In order to characterize the mesas, c-axis resistance versus temperature (R-T) and current-voltage (I-V) characteristics were investigated. During I-V characterization, Si composite bolometer was used to detect the emission. We obtained small critical current from as-grown mesas due to injection of spin polarized current. We observed THz emission peak for one of the mesas which has low quasiparticle conductivity and low dissipation due to its small critical current density. It means that the adjustment of doping level can be eliminated for THz emission by the injection of spin polarized current through the c-axes of the asgrown mesas.