SCALING PROPERTIES OF THE ELECTRICAL BEHAVIOR OF 2-2-1-2 BSCCO WHISKERS

The electrical transport of single crystal whiskers of the 2:2:1:2 pha se of Bismuth Strontium Calcium Copper Oxide (BSCCO), and of very smal l transverse dimensions, has been studied as a function of temperature and magnetic field. Over a very wide range of magnetic fields the cur rent voltage characteristics obey a simple but powerful scaling relati onship. This scaling has made possible a very detailed study of the si milarities between that data and the predictions of the thermally acti vated flux creep (TAFC) model of Kim and Anderson. At lower fields and currents the temperature and magnetic field dependence of the barrier height displays typical behaviour for that class of model, but the fl ux-bundle parameters deduced are temperature dependent. At high fields and high currents the observed behaviour differs very significantly f rom the TAFC prediction.