Magetoresistance of RuO_2-based resistance thermometers below 0.3 K.pdfVIP

a r X i v : c o n d - m a t / 0 0 0 7 3 9 9 v 3 [ c o n d - m a t .d i s - n n ] 1 3 A u g 2 0 0 1 Magnetoresistance of RuO2-based resistance thermometers below 0.3 K Michio Watanabe,1? Masashi Morishita,2 and Youiti Ootuka2 1Dept. Applied Physics and Physico-Informatics, Keio University, Yokohama 223-8522, Japan 2Institute of Physics, University of Tsukuba, 1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8571, Japan (Received 11 July 2000; accepted 26 March 2001) We have determined the magnetoresistance of RuO2-based resistors (Scientific Instruments (SI) RO-600) between 0.05 and 0.3 K in magnetic fields up to 8 T. The magnetoresistance is negative around 0.5 T and then becomes positive at larger fields. The magnitude of the negative magnetore- sistance increases rapidly as the temperature is lowered, while that of the positive magnetoresistance has smaller temperature dependence. We have also examined the temperature dependence of the re- sistance below 50 mK in zero magnetic field. It is described in the context of variable-range-hopping (VRH) conduction down to 15 mK. Hence, the resistors can be used as thermometers down to at least 15 mK. I. INTRODUCTION As promising low-temperature thermometers, RuO2- based thick-film chip resistors have been introduced (for example [1]). The advantages of such resistors are repro- ducibility and reasonably small magnetoresistance. In order to implement the accuracy of the thermometry in magnetic fields, a lot of works has been devoted to the magnetoresistance measurements of RuO2-based resis- tors [2–11]. Unfortunately, the magnetoresistance seems to be dependent on the detail of the manufacturing pro- cess. In the case of commercial resisters, results vary even in the sign of the magnetoresistance depending upon the manufacturing company as summarized in [8, Table 1]. Recently RuO2-based resistors produced by Scientific Instruments Inc. (SI) are used in many laboratories. However, there is no substantial publication on their ma