Investigation of the magnetic properties of BSCCO superconductors with scanning Hall probe microscope

Abstract

A low temperature scanning Hall probe microscope (LT-SHPM) with low noise GaAs/AlGaAs 2DEG Hall probes is used to investigate the magnetic properties of a Ag-sheathed BSCCO-2223 tape and a single crystal BSCCO-2212 superconductor. The Hall probes are micro fabricated with 1 µm wide Hall bars which have ∼0.85 µm electrical width. The magnetization behavior, vortex structures and the vortex lattice melting are observed at 77 K. Flux penetration into the BSCCO-2212 single crystal is also observed and imaged with single vortex resolution.