Demonstration of 0-pi transition in Josephson junctions containing unbalanced synthetic antiferromagnets

Abstract

Josephson junctions containing ferromagnetic (F) materials have been the subject of intense study over the past two decades. The ground state of such junctions oscillates between 0 and pi as the thickness of the ferromagnetic layer increases. For some applications, it might be beneficial to replace a very thin F layer with an unbalanced synthetic antiferromagnet (SAF) consisting of two F layers of different thicknesses whose magnetizations are coupled antiparallel to each other. According to theory, such a system should behave similarly to a single F layer whose thickness is equal to the difference of the two F-layer thicknesses in the SAF. We test that theoretical prediction with Josephson junctions containing unbalanced Ni/Ru/Ni SAFs, keeping the thickness of one layer fixed at 2.0 nm and varying the thickness of the other layer between 2.0 and 5.0 nm. We observe the first 0-pi transition at a thickness difference of 0.86 nm, which closely matches the position of the transition observed previously using single Ni layers.