Spin-Polarized Tunneling in Critically Disordered Be-Al Bilayers

Abstract

We report spin-polarized tunneling density of states measurements of the proximity modulated superconductor-insulator transition in ultra thin Be-Al bilayers. The bilayer samples consisted of a Be film of varying thickness, $d_\mathrm{Be}=\,$0.8-4.5 nm, on which a 1 nm thick capping layer of Al was deposited. Detailed measurements of the Zeeman splitting of the BCS coherence peaks in samples with sheet resistances $R\sim h/4e^2$ revealed a super-linear Zeeman shift near the critical field. Our data suggests that critically disordered samples have a broad distribution of gap energies and that only the higher portion of the distribution survives as the Zeeman critical field is approached. This produces a counter-intuitive field dependence in which the gap apparently increases with increasing parallel field.