Abstract
Critical-current experiments on thick ( μm) films of amorphous Ge or Si reveal a dramatic increase of the pinning force at fields around . The onset of this peak is triggered by a crossover from two- to three-dimensional disorder of the flux-line lattice, which occurs when the longitudinal correlation length is approximately . The large pinning force and the unusual nonlinear characteristics show that in the three-dimensional regime is determined by defects of the flux-line lattice which are extremely unstable.
- Received 11 April 1986
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.34.494
©1986 American Physical Society