Fermi velocity mismatch effects in the tunneling characteristics of high-Tc superconductors

Abstract We present a comparative study of the tunneling characteristics of point contacts in which one electrode was a superconducting single crystal of Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O x and the other electrode was either a normal metal (N-HTSC point contact), or a non-superconducting rare earth metallic oxide (REMO-HTSC point contact), or another crystal of the same superconductor (HTSC'-HTSC point contact). We show that the mismatch of the Fermi velocities of the electrodes is in part responsible for the irreproducibility of most of the tunneling conductance curves observed in high temperature superconductors.