Abstract
Among the different applications of the superconductive tunneling effect, one that has attracted a great deal of research interest is the use of superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) junctions, either as computer memory elements or as active mixing elements. In the latter case, which is of interest to us, the strong nonlinearity of tunneling current is used in a mixing process for microwave detection in the millimeter wavelength range.
In this work we develop a model for the current flow in SIS junctions, relating the observed I-V characteristic to the most important manufacturing parameters.
This model demonstrates its success by fitting it to I-V characteristics of all-Nb junctions with Al O-x barriers.