https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2009-00422-x
Nickel on lead, magnetically dead or alive?
Department of Physics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089-0484, USA
Corresponding author: bergmann@physics.usc.edu
Received:
17
July
2009
Revised:
28
October
2009
Published online:
11
December
2009
Two atomic layers of Ni condensed onto Pb films behave, according to anomalous Hall effect measurements, as magnetic dead layers. However, it has been observed that sub-monolayers of Ni lower the superconducting transition temperature of the Pb film. This has lead to the conclusion that the Ni atoms are still very weakly magnetic and that their magnetic scattering causes the reduction of the transition temperature. In the present paper the electron dephasing due to the Ni has been measured by weak localization. The dephasing is smaller by a factor 100 than the Tc-reduction would suggest. This proves that the Tc-reduction in the PbNi films is not due magnetic Ni moments.
PACS: 75.20.Hr – Local moment in compounds and alloys; Kondo effect, valence fluctuations, heavy fermions / 73.20.Fz – Weak or Anderson localization / 74.45.+c – Proximity effects; Andreev effect; SN and SNS junctions / 74.78.Fk – Multilayers, superlattices, heterostructures
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 2009