Quantitative assessment of pinning forces and the superconducting gap in NbN thin films from complementary magnetic force microscopy and transport measurements

Details Quantitative assessment of pinning forces and the superconducting gap in NbN thin films from complementary magnetic force microscopy and transport measurements Quantitative assessment of pinning forces and the superconducting gap in NbN thin films from complementary magnetic force microscopy and transport measurements

2011-01-21

arxiv.org/abs/1101.4128v1

Phys. Rev. B 83, 214517 (2011)

Physics

Condensed Matter

Superconductivity

6 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables

Scientific paper

10.1103/PhysRevB.83.214517

Epitaxial niobium-nitride thin films with a critical temperature of Tc=16K and a thickness of 100nm were fabricated on MgO(100) substrates by pulsed laser deposition. Low-temperature magnetic force microscopy (MFM) images of the supercurrent vortices were measured after field cooling in a magnetic field of 3mT at various temperatures. Temperature dependence of the penetration depth has been evaluated by a two-dimensional fitting of the vortex profiles in the monopole-monopole model. Its subsequent fit to a single s-wave gap function results in the superconducting gap amplitude Delta(0) = 2.9 meV = 2.1*kB*Tc, in perfect agreement with previous reports. The pinning force has been independently estimated from local depinning of individual vortices by lateral forces exerted by the MFM tip and from transport measurements. A good quantitative agreement between the two techniques shows that for low fields, B << Hc2, MFM is a powerful and reliable technique to probe the local variations of the pinning landscape. We also demonstrate that the monopole model can be successfully applied even for thin films with a thickness comparable to the penetration depth.

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