Superconducting Proximity Effect in Mesoscopic Metals

摘要

The relentless pace for miniaturization of electronic components has reached the limit where quantum-mechanical phenomena can be observed in the currents through submicron-size circuits. In this mesoscopic regime, the conduction electrons exhibit interference effects due to their wave nature, and inelastic scattering ceases to be efficient enough to break the intrinsic phase coherence of the electron waves. In macroscopic metallic wires, such phase-coherent phenomena can be found only in superconducting materials. This dissertation considers the phenomena encountered in heterostructures of superconductors (S) and mesoscopic normal, nonsuperconducting (N) metals. There, the superconducting order parameter, the pairing amplitude, penetrates into the normal-metal side inducing superconductive features in the normal-metal region near the interface.