Intrinsic tunneling in cuprates and manganites

Abstract The most anisotropic high temperature superconductors like Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 (BSCCO), as well as the recently discovered layered manganite La1.4Sr1.6Mn2O7 (LSMO) are layered metallic systems where the interlayer current transport occurs via sequential tunneling of charge carriers. As a consequence, in BSCCO adjacent CuO2 double layers form an intrinsic Josephson tunnel junction while in LSMO tunneling of spin polarized charge carriers between adjacent MnO2 layers leads to an intrinsic spin valve effect. We present and discuss interlayer transport experiments for both systems. To perform the experiments small sized mesa structures were patterned on top of single crystals of the above materials defining stacks of a small number of intrinsic Josephson junctions and intrinsic spin valves, respectively.