Influence of magnetism on superconductivity in epitaxial Fe/Nb bilayer systems

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

We studied the superconductivity of molecular-beam-epitaxy-grown epitaxial Nb(110) thin films covered by Fe(110) monocrystalline layers with thicknesses dFe between 4 and 30 {}. We find a nonmonotonous dependence of the superconducting transition temperature Tc on dFe, however, without a maximum in Tc(dFe) as observed earlier in Nb/Fe layers prepared by sputtering techniques. We argue that the change in the Tc(dFe) curve is caused by a smaller thickness of the nonmagnetic Fe-rich interlayer at the Nb/Fe interface and can be explained within the same model developed previously for the explanation of the maximum in Tc(dFe) in sputtered Nb/Fe layers.