IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 24, NO.

4, AUGUST 2014

1800307

Use of PdFe and NiFeNb as Soft Magnetic

Layers in Ferromagnetic Josephson Junctions for
Nonvolatile Cryogenic Memory
Bethany M. Niedzielski, Simon G. Diesch, Eric C. Gingrich, Yixing Wang,
Reza Loloee, William P. Pratt, Jr., and Norman O. Birge

(Invited Paper)

AbstractJosephson junctions containing ferromagnetic layers

are under consideration as the basic elements for cryogenic random access memory. For memory applications, either the amplitude of the critical current or the phase shift across the junction
must be controllable by changing the direction of magnetization of one or more of the ferromagnetic layers in the junction.
We have measured the critical currents in large-area Josephson
junctions containing three ferromagnetic layers. These junctions
carry spin-triplet supercurrent. This work addresses the choice of
material and optimum thickness for the one soft magnetic layer in
such junctions. We have used either a PdFe or NiFeNb alloy
for the soft layer, and find hysteresis in the low-field Fraunhofer
patterns due to magnetic switching of the soft layer. The critical
current is one order of magnitude smaller in the junctions containing the NiFeNb alloy compared to those containing PdFe alloy,
which is probably due to strong spin-memory loss in the former.
While the large-area junctions studied here are not suitable for
memory applications, these experiments lay the groundwork for
future studies of submicron junctions where the magnetic state of
the junction can be controlled by shape anisotropy.
Index TermsJosephson junctions, magnetic materials, magnetic memory.

I. I NTRODUCTION AND M OTIVATION

HERE is renewed interest in the development of superconducting computers to help alleviate the problem of
power dissipation in high-end computers based on conventional
silicon technology [1]. Superconducting logic circuits based
on the propagation of single flux quanta [2] were invented
over 25 years ago, and several low-power descendants of that

Manuscript received January 10, 2014; revised February 10, 2014; accepted
March 3, 2014. Date of publication March 12, 2014; date of current version
April 3, 2014. This work was supported by IARPA under SPAWAR contract
N66001-12-C-2017. The work of S. Diesch was also supported in part by the
German-Israeli-Project (DIP) from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. This
paper was recommended by A. Kleinsasser.
B. M. Niedzielski, E. C. Gingrich, Y. Wang, R. Loloee, W. P. Pratt, Jr., and
N. O. Birge are with the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State
University, East Lansing, MI 48824-2320 USA.
S. G. Diesch is with the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan
State University, East Lansing, MI 48824-2320 USA, and also with University
of Konstanz, 78464 Konstanz, Germany (e-mail: birge@pa.msu.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TASC.2014.2311442

logic are currently under development [3][7]. One of the main

obstacles to the development of large-scale superconducting
computing has been the lack of a high-density, low-power
form of superconducting memory. Recent advances in the
development of Josephson junctions containing ferromagnetic
materials [8], [9], in conjunction with the commercial development of magnetic random access memory [10], have led to
several new ideas for high-density, low-power, superconducting
memory [11][14].
We are working toward superconducting memory elements
based on the Josephson Magnetic Random Access Memory (JMRAM) concept developed by workers at Northrop
Grumman Corporation [12]. A JMRAM memory cell contains
one or more Josephson junctions whose primary characteristics
(critical current or phase shift) can be controlled by the relative
orientations of the magnetizations of the ferromagnetic layers
inside the junction. In principle, there are several flavors of
Josephson junctions that have this capability. The most basic
design consists of two ferromagnetic layerscalled F and


F inside an S/F/N/F
/S Josephson junction. (S refers to a superconducting electrode, and N is a non-magnetic normal metal
spacer layer that serves to decouple the magnetizations of F and
F .) Typically F is a hard ferromagnet whose magnetization
stays fixed, while F is a soft ferromagnet whose magnetization
direction can be switched with a modest external field. Recent
work by Baek et al. [15] and by Qader et al. [16] on this
type of junction demonstrates switching of the critical current
between high and low values by switching the direction of the
F magnetization. Their work also provides indirect evidence
that it should be possible to switch the junction between 0 and
states if the thickness of the F layer is chosen judiciously,
although no phase-sensitive measurements were performed in
those works.


One potential drawback of the S/F/N/F
/S junction described
above is that the electron pair correlations oscillate and decay
very rapidly in the ferromagnetic layers. That occurs because
the two electrons from the Cooper pair leaving S enter different
spin bands in F or F , which have different Fermi wave vectors.
In the diffusive limit, the length
 scale governing both the
oscillation and decay is F = D/Eex , where Eex is the
exchange energy in the ferromagnet. (Typical values for F

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 24, NO. 4, AUGUST 2014

are less than 1 nm for strong ferromagnetic materials [17].)

Hence, the thicknesses of both F and F must be controlled
very preciselyespecially if the memory element relies on


/S junction.
controlling the phase of the S/F/N/F
In this paper, we focus on a different flavor of Josephson
junction, namely one that carries spin-triplet supercurrent.
Spin-triplet pair correlations with angular momentum projection m = 1 along the magnetization axis consist of two
electrons in the same spin band, so they behave as though
they were in a normal, nonmagnetic metal. In particular, they
maintain phase coherence over long distances (up to several
hundred nm at low temperatures), in contrast to the very short
distances over which spin-singlet pairs lose phase coherence
in ferromagnets. The motivation for working toward spintriplet Josephson junctions for cryogenic memory is that the
tolerances on the thicknesses of the various magnetic layers in
the junctions may be more forgiving than they are when using
spin-singlet junctions.
Superconducting materials with inherent spin-triplet pairing
are rare in nature. However, the possibility to convert spinsinglet Cooper pairs to spin-triplet supercurrent in ferromagnetic Josephson junctions with conventional superconducting
electrodes was predicted in a series of theoretical papers starting
with a seminal paper by Bergeret, Volkov, and Efetov in 2001
[18]. The basic physics of the conversion is nicely explained
by Eschrig [19]. When a spin-singlet Cooper pair leaves a
superconductor and enters a ferromagnet, the two electrons
enter different spin bands with different Fermi wave vectors, as
described above, and rapidly accumulate a relative phase shift.
A consequence of that phase shift is that the pair correlation
function acquires a spin-triplet component with zero projection along the quantization axis (m = 0). If the electron pair
then enters a second ferromagnet whose magnetization is noncollinear with the first, the m = 0 triplet component transforms
into m = 1 and m = 1 triplet components along the new
quantization axis. Those components are long-range in the
second ferromagnet because they correspond to both electrons
of the pair residing in the same spin bandthe majority band
for m = 1 or the minority band for m = 1.
Experimental evidence for spin-triplet supercurrent or
spin-triplet pair correlations has been obtained by several
groups using different approaches [20][26]. Our approach
is based on Josephson junctions with the generic structure:


/S, where F , F, and F are all ferromagnetic
S/F/N/F/N/F
layers. This geometry was proposed by Houzet and Buzdin
in 2007 [27], but was not experimentally realized until our
work appeared in 2010 [20]. Spin-singlet pairs coming from


/S structure) are
the left-hand S electrode (in the S/F/N/F/N/F
converted to triplet pairs in F when the magnetization of F is
non-collinear with that of F , and are re-converted back to spinsinglet pairs at the right-hand S electrode when the magnetization of F is non-collinear with that of F. The conversion
efficiency from spin-singlet to spin-triplet pairs and back is
maximized when the magnetizations of adjacent layers in the
structure are orthogonal.
To achieve orthogonal magnetizations, we have explored
two experimental realizations. All of our Josephson junction
samples have the supercurrent flowing in the vertical, out-

of-plane direction. In our earlier work, we used a Co/Ru/Co

synthetic antiferromagnet (SAF) for F, and found that applying
a strong in-plane magnetic field to the junctions led to a large
enhancement of the junction critical current, Ic , relative to
its value in the as-grown state [28]. This enhancement occurs
because the applied field causes the magnetizations of the F and
F layers to orient parallel to the field direction. Simultaneously,
the Co magnetizations in the SAF undergo a spin-flop transition, and end up oriented perpendicular to the field direction
(but still in plane) after the field is removed. As a consequence
the magnetized samples have the magnetizations of adjacent
layers orthogonal, as desired. The second option we pursued
was to use a [Ni/Co]n multilayer with perpendicular magnetic
anisotropy (PMA) for the F layer [29], with its magnetization
pointing out-of-plane. The spin-triplet supercurrent in those
samples was already optimized in the as-grown state; subjecting
the samples to an in-plane field did not enhance the critical
current, and in some samples it reduced the critical current.
(The in-plane field should have magnetized the F and F layers,
but apparently it was detrimental to the out-of-plane F-layer
magnetization.)
The magnitude of the critical current in Josephson junctions
is conveniently characterized by the Ic RN product, where RN
is the normal-state resistance of the junction, because in most
situations Ic RN is independent of the junction cross-sectional
area. In our previous work [20], [28], [29], the distinctive signature of spin-triplet supercurrent was a much slower decay of
Ic RN with increasing F layer thickness in samples containing
the F and F layers, compared to similar samples without those
extra ferromagnetic layers. We obtained values of Ic RN of 1
to 2 V in spin-triplet junctions containing the Co/Ru/Co SAF
after they were magnetized [28], [30], and 3 to 5 V in junctions
containing the multilayer with PMA [29].
Here, we explore the next step toward control of the supercurrent in spin-triplet junctions. Theory predicts that the
ground-state phase across a spin-triplet junction can be either
0 or , depending on the relative orientations of the three
ferromagnetic layer magnetizations [27]. Assuming that the
magnetizations of the F and F layers are non-collinear, the
junction will be a junction if the F magnetization is parallel
to the F magnetization, or a 0 junction if those two are antiparallel. Verification of that theoretical prediction will require the
fabrication of junctions containing a combination of hard and
soft magnetic materials, so that their magnetization directions
can be controlled independently. The goals of this work are:
1) to assess the viability of various soft magnetic materials
for the F layer, and 2) to determine the optimum thickness
of those materials for producing spin-triplet supercurrent. We
do not perform phase-sensitive measurements in this work. In
the junctions studied here, we have utilized 1.2-nm thick Ni
for the hard F layer, with a high coercive field of 0 Hc
0.1 T. (Of the various alloys weve used for the F layer, Ni
is the most effective at converting spin-singlet to spin-triplet
supercurrent [31].) For the soft F layer, we have utilized either
a Pd1x Fex alloy with x = 1.4%, or a Nb-doped Permalloy
alloy of approximate composition Ni76 Fe15 Nb9 . The PdFe
alloy is known to have low spin-orbit coupling and hence low
magneto-crystalline anisotropy; in addition, it has been used as

NIEDZIELSKI et al.: PdFe AND NiFeNb IN FERROMAGNETIC JOSEPHSON JUNCTIONS

Fig. 1. Cross-sectional schematic of Josephson junction multilayered structure (not to scale). Arrows indicate magnetization directions of the ferromagnetic layers. The lateral dimension of the ion-milled section between the SiOx
insulators is between 3 and 12 m for the junctions in this study. (Patterning
only the top S electrode is sufficient to define the junction geometry because
the supercurrent tends to take the shortest path through the multilayer.)

a soft magnetic layer in a different style of memory element

by the Hypres-Chernogolovka collaboration [14]. Nb-doped
Permalloy alloys were shown recently by the NIST Boulder
group to have very low coercive field when incorporated into
Josephson junctions [15]. Those authors had less success using
PdFe than did the Hypres groupa result that foreshadows
some of the results of our work reported here. For the F layer,
we have utilized both the Co/Ru/Co SAF and the [Ni/Co]n
multilayer with PMA. The F layers in these junctions have been
chosen to be thick enough so that the spin-singlet supercurrent
is suppressed to a level no more than 10% of the spin-triplet
supercurrent.
II. S AMPLE FABRICATION AND M EASUREMENT
Josephson junction samples were fabricated in the same man

/S
ner as in our previous work [20]. The entire S/F/N/F/N/F


multilayer is sputtered in one run onto 0.5 0.5 square,
unoxidized Si chips held between 30 C and 0 C, without
breaking vacuum. The sputtering chamber has a base pressure
of 2 108 Torr, and sputtering is carried out in 3 mTorr of
purified Ar gas. Layer thicknesses are indicated in Fig. 1. The
top Nb (S) layer in the initial deposition has a thickness of only
20 nm, and is protected by Au to prevent oxidation. Circular
junctions of diameters between 3 and 12 m are defined by
image-reversal photolithography and subsequent ion milling.
For this work we milled through the 20-nm Nb layer and
part-way through the Cu (N) layer below it, leaving all of
the ferromagnetic layers unpatterned. Immediately following
the ion milling, a layer of insulating SiOx is deposited by
thermal evaporation, then the photoresist protecting the circular
junctions is removed. Finally, the thick top Nb electrodes
(coated by Au again) are sputtered either through a mechanical
mask or a photolithographic stencil. The thin Au layer between
the 20-nm Nb and thick Nb top electrode effectively becomes
superconducting by proximity.

1800307

Fig. 2. Critical current versus applied external magnetic field for a Josephson
junction of diameter 10 m with F = Ni(1.2), F = Ni(0.4)/[Co(0.2)/
Ni(0.4)]10 multilayer and F = Pd Fe(30) alloy, where all thicknesses are
given in nm. Colors and symbols indicate the direction of increasing field with
black squares sweeping from negative to positive field values and red circles
sweeping from positive to negative field values. No hysteresis is observed.
Inset: Current-voltage characteristic of one of our junctions. The data follow
the theoretical expectation for overdamped junctions given in the text.

Because our Josephson junction samples have wide lateral

dimensions and relatively thin interlayers, their normal-state
resistances are lowabout 1 m for a 3-m wide junction.
To achieve high signal-to-noise ratio while measuring junctions of such small resistance, we measure the current-voltage
(IV ) characteristics of the samples using a current-comparator
circuit based on a commercial rf SQUID null detector [32].
All of the IV characteristics measured in this work have the
standard form for overdamped Josephson junctions: V = 0 for
1/2
for |I| > Ic . (See the
|I| < Ic , and |V | = RN (I 2 Ic2 )
inset to Fig. 2.)
An excellent way to characterize Josephson junctions is to
measure Ic as a function of an external magnetic field H
applied in the plane of the junctioni.e., perpendicular to the
direction of current flow. The shape of the resulting Fraunhofer
pattern in Ic (H) provides information about the supercurrent
distribution in the junction [33], and deep minima indicate that
there are no short-circuits in the surrounding oxide. Junctions
containing strong ferromagnetic materials do not always show
textbook-like Fraunhofer patterns due to the complex pattern
of intrinsic magnetic flux inside the junctionssee our earlier
work for a discussion of that issue [34], [35]. In this paper,
we show data only from those samples that exhibit reasonably
good Fraunhofer patternsabout 75% of the total samples
measured.
III. J OSEPHSON J UNCTIONS W ITH PdFe
As discussed earlier, we decided to use PdFe alloy as the
soft magnetic materials for the F layer because we had previous experience with that material [36], and because another
group had successfully used it inside Josephson junctions [14].
For the choice of F layer material, we initially decided to use

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Fig. 3. Semi-log plot of Ic RN versus thickness of the F layer for Josephson
junctions containing F = Ni/Co multilayer and F = Pd Fe alloy. Each
circle represents a single junction; multiple junctions with the same PdFe
thickness may be on different chips.

the Ni/Co multilayer for this work, since it provided larger

values of Ic RN than did the Co/Ru/Co SAF in our earlier
work [28][30].
A. Junctions Containing Ni/Co Multilayers
Fig. 2 shows a typical Fraunhofer pattern for an


S/F/N/F/N/F
/S Josephson junction of diameter 10 m
with F = Ni(1.2), F = [Ni(0.4)/Co(0.2)]10 /Ni(0.4), and
F = Pd Fe(30), where all thicknesses are in nm. Several
features are immediately apparent. First, the shape of the pattern is reasonable, but is certainly not excellent. This is not
too worrisome, because we found previously that many of our
junctions containing Ni/Co multilayers had strangely-shaped
Fraunhofer patterns [29]. At least there is a clear central peak
for applied fields between 0 and 1.5 mT, giving us a reasonable
expectation that the supercurrent is nearly uniform in that field
range. A more puzzling feature of the data shown in Fig. 2 is
that there is no visible hysteresis between the data taken while
the field was ramped in the positive direction (black squares
and curve) and the data taken while the field was ramped in
the negative direction (red circles and curve). Due to the soft
magnetic properties of the PdFe alloy, we expected to see
hysteresis in the Fraunhofer patterns at low fields, indicative of
the magnetic configuration of the PdFe changing with applied
field.
One of the goals of this work was to determine the optimum
thickness of the PdFe alloy for converting the spin-singlet
Cooper pairs from the Nb electrodes into spin-triplet supercurrent inside the F layer. To achieve that goal, we fabricated and
measured junctions with a wide range of PdFe thicknesses.
One expects to see first an increase, and then a decrease in
Ic RN as the PdFe thickness increased [20], [27], [28]. Fig. 3
shows a summary of the results on all the samples, in a plot of
Ic RN as a function of PdFe thickness. There is considerable
scatter in the data, but we can conclude that there is little
variation in Ic RN as the PdFe thickness varies between 12

Fig. 4. Critical current versus applied magnetic field for a Josephson junction
of diameter 3 m with F = Co(6)/Ru(0.6)/Co(6) and F = Pd Fe(15)
alloy. The black squares and red circles represent data taken with the external
field increasing in the positive and negative directions, respectively. At low field
values, hysteresis is observed.

and 30 nm. That is a very wide thickness range compared to

what we have seen with other F or F materials, but this 1.5%
PdFe alloy is by far the weakest ferromagnetic material we




/S
or S/F/N/F/N/F
/S junctions.
have studied in S/F/N/F/N/F
The highest values of Ic RN in these junctions is only about
1 V, which is somewhat lower than the highest values of 4 to
5 V we observed in similar junctions where both F and F
were Ni [29]. Apparently PdFe is not as efficient as Ni is at
converting singlet supercurrent to triplet supercurrent and viceversa.
B. Junctions Containing Co/Ru/Co SAF
The lack of hysteresis in the Fraunhofer patterns of the
samples discussed above led us to try substituting the Co/Ru/Co
SAF for the Ni/Co multilayer as the F layer in our junctions.
Fig. 4 shows a Fraunhofer pattern for a Josephson junction
of diameter 3 m containing F = Ni and F = Pd Fe alloy
of thickness 15 nm, but now with F = Co(6)/Ru(0.6)/Co(6),
where the thicknesses are in nm. The sample was magnetized in
an in-plane field of 260 mT in the positive direction before these
data were acquired. That field is sufficient to fully magnetize
the Ni F layer, and also to trigger the spin-flop transition in
the Co/Ru/Co SAF. Several features of the data in Fig. 4 jump
out. First and foremost, the quality (shape) of the Fraunhofer
pattern in Fig. 4 is much better than the one shown in Fig. 2.
Apparently the Co/Ru/Co SAF does a better job of eliminating
intrinsic magnetic flux in the junction than does the Ni/Co
multilayer with PMA. Second, and equally important, there
is hysteresis in the Fraunhofer data at low field. The data
taken with the field ramping in the positive direction show
a nearly textbook-quality Fraunhofer pattern with the central
peak slightly shifted to negative field. That is due to the Ni
magnetization, which points in the positive direction. The central peak in the Fraunhofer pattern occurs when the flux in the
junction due to the external field exactly cancels the net flux

NIEDZIELSKI et al.: PdFe AND NiFeNb IN FERROMAGNETIC JOSEPHSON JUNCTIONS

Fig. 5. Semi-log plot of Ic RN versus thickness of the F layer for Josephson
junctions with F = Co/Ru/Co and F = Pd Fe alloy.

due to the internal magnetizations [34]. The data taken with

the field ramping in the negative direction do not show such
an ideal Fraunhofer pattern. That is because the magnetization
of the soft PdFe layer is already starting to switch directions
before the central peak of the pattern has been reached. The hysteresis is apparent already when the field decreases to +2 mT,
and is well-pronounced when the field reaches zero. The large
drop in critical current compared to the data taken while
ramping the field upward is indicative of the complex domain
structure in the PdFe alloy that occurs while its magnetization
is switching direction. Note that the order in which the two data
sets are acquired is not relevant.
Fig. 5 shows a summary of all of the junctions with this structure, again as a plot of Ic RN versus PdFe thickness. There is
some scatter in the data, but the data do show a broad maximum
in Ic RN for PdFe thicknesses in the range of 1524 nm,
consistent with the plot shown in Fig. 3. Note that the maximum
values of Ic RN are about 0.5 Vonly about half as large
as in the junctions with the Ni/Co multilayer as F. The fact
that the Ni/Co multilayer produces somewhat higher values
of Ic RN than does the Co/Ru/Co SAF is consistent with the


/S
junctions [28]
results of our earlier work with S/F/N/F/N/F
[30]. Nevertheless, the higher quality of the Fraunhofer patterns
and the smaller data scatter in the junctions containing F =
Co/Ru/Co suggest that it is more promising than the Ni/Co
multilayer for future applications.
An astute reader is undoubtedly curious as to why we observe hysteresis in junctions containing F = Pd Fe alloy and
F = Co/Ru/Co, but not in junctions with the same F layer but
with the Ni/Co multilayer as F. The most plausible explanation
is that stray fields from the Ni/Co domain structure tend to
pin the magnetic configuration of the soft PdFe alloy, so that
the latter does not change as the external field ramps through
zero. Substantial stray fields are expected in a material with
PMA when it breaks up into upward and downward pointing
domains. In the Co/Ru/Co SAF, in contrast, most of the stray
magnetic field generated at the domain boundaries stays inside
the trilayer. This is an important lesson, as it reinforces the
notion that the magnetic properties of any thin magnetic film

1800307

Fig. 6. Critical current versus applied field for a Josephson junction of diameter 3 m with F = Co(6)/Ru(0.6)/Co(6) and F = Ni Fe Nb(1.5)
alloy. The black squares and red circles indicate positive and negative field
sweep directions, respectively. Again, hysteresis is observed at low field values.

may depend as much on the geometrical configuration and the

surrounding materials as they do on the film itself.
IV. J OSEPHSON J UNCTIONS W ITH NiFeNb
While this work was being carried out, we learned about the
work by Baek et al. mentioned in the Introduction [15]. Those
authors were not interested in spin-triplet supercurrent; nevertheless, their experience fabricating and measuring Josephson
junctions containing both hard and soft magnetic ferromaterials
is clearly relevant to our work. In particular, those authors found


/S junctions containing Ni as the hard F layer and
that S/F/N/F
PdFe as the soft F layer did not switch cleanly between two
states, in spite of the fact that isolated PdFe films showed clean
magnetization switching with low coercivity. Apparently the
incorporation of the PdFe films into the Josephson junctions
changed their magnetic behavior substantially. That could be
due to stray fields from the domains of the nearby Ni layer,
or it could be due to different growth conditions for the film,
which can result in strain and/or disorder. Baek et al. did
find an alternative soft material with better magnetic switching
behavior, namely a Nb-doped Permalloy (NiFeNb) alloy with
Nb concentration in the range of 9 to 13%.
Following the work by Baeket al., we decided to try using
9% Nb-doped Permalloy in our spin-triplet junctions. We chose
the lower Nb concentration because the resistivity of Nb-doped
Permalloy grows very rapidly with Nb concentration [37]. The
increase in the resistivity usually signals a decrease in the mean
free path. That, in turn, leads to decreases in other significant
length scales, including the spin-diffusion length, lsf , which is
the length scale over which electron spin information is lost. If
lsf in a ferromagnetic layer is small compared to the thickness
of that layer, then one expects the supercurrent to be suppressed
exponentially with thickness.
Fig. 6 shows a typical Fraunhofer pattern for an


/S junction of diameter 3 m with F = Ni, F =
S/F/N/F/N/F
Co/Ru/Co and F = Ni Fe Nb alloy of thickness 1.5 nm.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 24, NO. 4, AUGUST 2014

Fig. 7. Semi-log plot of Ic RN dependence on F layer thickness for Josephson

junctions with F = Co/Ru/Co and F = Ni Fe Nb alloy.

The sample was magnetized in an in-plane field of +260 mT

prior to taking these measurements. The data are very similar
to those shown in Fig. 4, except with lower values of Ic RN .
The quality of the Fraunhofer pattern is quite good when the
field is ramped in the positive direction, but not when the field
is ramped in the negative direction. Again, this is because the
central peak in the Fraunhofer pattern is slightly shifted to
negative field to compensate the magnetization of the Ni layer.
When the field reaches zero while ramping downward, before
reaching the peak in the Fraunhofer pattern, the NiFeNb F
layer magnetization is already starting to switch. Hysteresis in
the Fraunhofer pattern is apparent for applied fields between 7
and +7 mTa slightly wider range than observed in the case
of the PdFe alloy.
Fig. 7 summaries all of the data from the samples with this
structure. The largest value of Ic RN observed in these samples
is only 50 nV, about 10 times smaller than in similar junctions
containing PdFe alloy as the F layer in the place of the
NiFeNb alloy. In addition, the values of Ic RN decrease
rapidly with increasing thickness of the F layer. In fact,
we measured a few samples with larger F layer thicknesses
(4.0 and 5.0 nm), but we were not able to detect any supercurrent in those samples. We conclude that the spin-diffusion
length is very short in this alloy, which suppresses the supercurrent rapidly as the NiFeNb thickness increases. (The data do
not extend over a wide enough range to permit us to determine
the value of lsf , but they suggest that it is very short, possible
in the range of 1 nm.)
V. C ONCLUSION
Several conclusions can be drawn from the data presented
here. The main conclusion is that both the PdFe and NiFeNb
alloys used in this work may be suitable as soft ferromagnetic
layers inside controllable ferromagnetic Josephson junctions.
For PdFe, the optimal thickness is in the range 1524 nm,
while for NiFeNb, the optimal thickness is no greater than
1.5 nm. Two warnings accompany that recommendation, how-

ever. First, the PdFe alloy behaved as a soft ferromagnet only

when the magnetic layer immediately below it was a Co/Ru/Co
SAF, but not when the layer below it was a Ni/Co multilayer
with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. The stray fields from
the PMA layer evidently destroy the soft characteristic of the
PdFe, suggesting that ferromagnetic layers with PMA should
be avoided in future work aimed at controlling the magnetic
state of a Josephson junction. Second, The NiFeNb alloy
with 9% Nb strongly suppresses the critical current in these
junctions. That could be due to strong spin-memory loss. It is
known from earlier experimental [38] and theoretical [39], [40]
work that spin-flip or spin-orbit scattering suppress spin-singlet
supercurrent, hence any such scattering taking place within
the F or F layers within our samples will suppress Ic . The
suppression caused by the NiFeNb appears to be about one
order of magnitude, even when the NiFeNb layer thickness is
only 1.5 nm. (We did not fabricate samples with layers thinner
than that.)
In the future, we plan to control the magnetic state of the
junctions in a bi-stable manner by fabricating junctions with at
least the F layer patterned into an elliptical nanomagnet. If the
small magnetic layer is single-domain, then shape anisotropy
should restrict the magnetic configuration to one of two possible
states. Such a device would then become a potential candidate
for use in cryogenic random access memory.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank B. Bi for technical assistance, and use
of the Keck Microfabrication Facility. N.O.B. acknowledges
numerous discussions with A. Herr, Q. Herr, D. Miller,
O. Naaman, and N. Newman.
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Authors biographies not available at the time of publication.