A contactless method for measurement of the critical current density and critical temperature of superconducting films

A new method is described for measuring the critical current density and transition temperature of a superconducting film without making contact to it or modifying it in any way. This technique is particularly well suited for use with high transition temperature oxide films which are notoriously irreproducible and sensitive to patterning. It consists of positioning a flat, multiturn coil near the film surface and driving the coil with an audio frequency sine‐wave current. Induced shielding currents flow in the film. We have calculated the radial dependence of the induced currents and show that the induced current density is zero at the coil center, rises to a maximum near the mean radius of the drive coil, and then falls off rapidly as the radius continues to increase. A measurement of the critical current per length can be obtained by monitoring the development of odd harmonic voltage components across the coil as the drive current is increased. We find that this measure of nonlinearity in the coil–film ...