High-performance electronic cooling with superconducting tunnel junctions

Publication date: Available online 20 August 2016 Source:Comptes Rendus Physique Author(s): Hervé Courtois, Hung Q. Nguyen, Clemens B. Winkelmann, Jukka P. Pekola When biased at a voltage just below a superconductor's energy gap, a tunnel junction between this superconductor and a normal metal cools the latter. While the study of such devices has long been focused to structures of submicron size and consequently cooling power in the picowatt range, we have led a thorough study of devices with a large cooling power up to the nanowatt range. Here we describe how their performance can be optimized by using a quasi-particle drain and tuning the cooling junctions' tunnel barrier.
Source: Comptes Rendus Physique - Category: Physics Source Type: research