Related papers: Electron Refrigeration in the Tunneling Approach
Electron tunneling between superconductors and normal metals has been used for an efficient refrigeration of electrons in the latter. Such cooling is a non-linear effect and usually requires a large voltage. Here we study the electron…
We investigate heat and charge transport through a diffusive SIF1F2N tunnel junction, where N (S) is a normal (superconducting) electrode, I is an insulator layer and F1,2 are two ferromagnets with arbitrary direction of magnetization. The…
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 focussed to structures of submicron size and…
We investigate heat and charge transport in NN'IS tunnel junctions in the diffusive limit. Here N and S are massive normal and superconducting electrodes (reservoirs), N' is a normal metal strip, and I is an insulator. The flow of electric…
We demonstrate both theoretically and experimentally two limiting factors in cooling electrons using biased tunnel junctions to extract heat from a normal metal into a superconductor. Firstly, when the injection rate of electrons exceeds…
We present evidence for the cooling of normal metal phonons by electron tunneling in a Superconductor - Normal metal - Superconductor tunnel junction. The normal metal electron temperature is extracted by comparing the device…
The design and operation of an electronic cooler based on a combination of superconducting tunnel junctions is described. The cascade extraction of hot-quasiparticles, which stems from the energy gaps of two different superconductors,…
We discuss inherent thermometry in a Superconductor - Normal metal - Superconductor tunnel junction. In this configuration, the energy selectivity of single-particle tunneling can provide a significant electron cooling, depending on the…
We study theoretically a process of cooling electrons using a superconducting tunnel junction with a $\pi$ phase difference and a usual insulator or a ferroelectric in-between, and an array of such junctions with ferroelectric layers…
At low temperatures, the transport through a superconducting-normal tunnel interface is due to tunneling of electrons in pairs. The probability for this process is shown to depend on the layout of the electrodes near the tunnel junction,…
Efficient electron-refrigeration based on a normal-metal/spin-filter/superconductor junction is proposed and demonstrated theoretically. The spin-filtering effect leads to values of the cooling power much higher than in conventional…
Enhanced electron cooling is demonstrated in a strained-silicon/superconductor tunnel junction refrigerator of volume 40 um^3. The electron temperature is reduced from 300 mK to 174 mK, with the enhancement over an unstrained silicon…
In this work, we review and expand recent theoretical proposals for the realization of electronic thermal diodes based on tunnel-junctions of normal metal and superconducting thin films. Starting from the basic rectifying properties of a…
Micro-refrigerators that operate in the sub-kelvin regime are a key device in quantum technology. A well-studied candidate, an electronic cooler using Normal metal - Insulator - Superconductor (NIS) tunnel junctions offers substantial…
A promising scheme for electron microrefrigeration based on ferromagnet-superconductor contacts is presented. In this setup, cooling power densities up to 600 nW/$\mu$m$^2$ can be achieved leading to electronic temperature reductions…
We demonstrate highly transparent silicon-vanadium and silicon-aluminum tunnel junctions with relatively low sub-gap leakage current and discuss how a trade-off typically encountered between transparency and leakage affects their…
The authors use two insulator layers in thermotunnel refrigerator to modify the shape of the tunneling barrier so that electrons with high kinetic energy pass it with increased probability. Theoretical analysis show that the overall…
In electronic cooling with superconducting tunnel junctions, the cooling power is counterbalanced by the interaction with phonons and by the heat flow from the overheated leads. We study aluminium-based coolers that are equipped with a…
We focus on a recently experimentally realized scenario of normal-metal-insulator-superconductor tunnel junctions coupled to a superconducting resonator. We develop a first-principles theory to describe the effect of photon-assisted…
Thermo-electric transport at the nano-scale is a rapidly developing topic, in particular in superconductor-based hybrid devices. In this review paper, we first discuss the fundamental principles of electronic cooling in mesoscopic…