Intrinsic Josephson tunneling for basic studies of high-temperature superconductors

High-temperature superconductors (HTS) are highly anisotropic with layers of CuO2 separated by layers of charge reservoirs. The superconducting CuO2 planes are weakly coupled by Josephson tunneling of Cooper pairs in the c-axis direction. It may be possible to use the intrinsic tunneling to realize a stack of intrinsic Josephson junctions at the surface of a single crystal (or epitaxial film) of HTS. These will form excellent tools in the study of superconducting properties of HTS.