Temperature behavior of SNS-like Nb/Al-AlOx/Nb Josephson junctions

Overdamped Nb/Al-AlOx/Nb Josephson junctions are an intermediate state between the SIS and SNS Josephson junctions. Stable and reproducible non-hysteretic current-voltage characteristics have been obtained with a proper choice of the fabrication parameters, featuring critical current densities J(c) up to 25 kA/cm(2) and characteristic voltages up to 450 mu V. While these values make the junctions interesting for RSFQ electronic circuits, their response to an RF signal at 70 GHz has demonstrated their suitability for both programmable and ac voltage standard. In these work we analyse the temperature behavior of these junctions up to T/T-c = 1, T-c being the niobium critical temperature, which gives relevant information on the junction structure and, especially, on the oxide insulator/metallic film barrier, which is the key for the reproducible transition from an hysteretic to a non-hysteretic behavior. The results are also compared with other data of hysteretic and overdamped junctions. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.