Analytical expression of the transverse resistance for a normal state layered superconductor measured with four arbitrarily disposed punctual contacts Original Research Article

We derived an analytical expression of the transverse resistance for a normal state layered superconductor measured with four punctual contacts, arbitrarily disposed on the top and bottom surface of the sample. This expression is important to suppress the error induced by contact misalignments. It has been used to analyze a common error induced by confusing punctual contacts with strips. We found that this error increases for small values of the effective anisotropy and when current and voltage contacts are approached to each other. A similar expression for the longitudinal resistance, measured with four punctual contacts with arbitrary positions, has been derived. We used these two expressions to determine the room temperature resistivity anisotropy of the superconducting misfit layer compound (SnS)1.17(NbS2).