  This letter presents experiments on junctions fabricated by a new technique
that enables the use of high quality aluminum oxide tunnel barriers with normal
metal electrodes at low temperatures. Inverse proximity effect is applied to
diminish the superconductivity of an aluminum dot through a clean lateral
connection to a normal metal electrode. To demonstrate the effectiveness of
this method, fully normal-state single electron transistors (SET) and normal
metal-insulator-superconductor (NIS) junctions applying proximized Al junctions
were fabricated. The transport characteristics of the junctions were similar to
those obtained from standard theoretical models of regular SETs and NIS
junctions.
