No Arabic abstract
The flux pinning force density (Fp) of the single crystalline FeTe0.60Se0.40 superconductor has been calculated from the magnetization measurements. The normalized Fp versus h (=H/Hirr) curves are scaled using the Dew-Hughes formula to underline the pinning mechanism in the compound. The obtained values of pinning parameters p and q indicate the vortex pinning by the mixing of the surface and the point core pinning of the normal centers. The vortex phase diagram has also been drawn for the first time for the FeTe0.60Se0.40, which has very high values of critical current density Jc ~ 1.10(5) Amp/cm2 and the upper critical field Hc2(0) = 65T, with a reasonably high transition temperature Tc =14.5K.
Measurements of magnetotransport and current-voltage (I-V) characteristics up to 9 T were used to investigate the vortex phase diagram of an under-doped Measurements of magnetotransport and current-voltage (I-V) characteristics up to 9 T were used to investigate the vortex phase diagram of an under-doped (Ba,K)Fe2As2 single crystal with Tc=26.2 K. It is found that the anisotropy ratio of the upper critical field Hc2 decreases from 4 to 2.8 with decreasing temperature from Tc to 24.8 K. Consistent with the vortex-glass theory, the I-V curves measured at H=9 T can be well scaled with the vortex-glass transition temperature of Tg=20.7 K and critical exponents z=4.1 and v=1. Analyses in different magnetic fields produced almost identical critical exponent values, with some variation in Tg, corroborating the existence of the vortex-glass transition in this under-doped (Ba,K)Fe2As2 single crystal up to 9 T. A vortex phase diagram is presented, based on the evolution of Tg and Hc2 with magnetic field.
We have studied the magnetic characteristics of a series of super-oxygenated La2-xSrxCuO4+y samples. As shown in previous work, these samples spontaneously phase separate into an oxygen rich superconducting phase with a TC near 40 K and an oxygen poor magnetic phase that also orders near 40 K. All samples studied are highly magnetically reversible even to low temperatures. Although the internal magnetic regions of these samples might be expected to act as pinning sites, our present study shows that they do not favor flux pinning. Flux pinning requires a matching condition between the defect and the superconducting coherence length. Thus, our results imply that the magnetic regions are too large to act as pinning centers. This also implies that the much greater flux pinning in typical La2-xSrxCuO4 materials is the result of nanoscale inhomogeneities that grow to become the large magnetic regions in the super-oxygenated materials. The superconducting regions of the phase separated materials are in that sense cleaner and more homogenous than in the typical cuprate superconductor.
The superconducting phase diagram of MgB2 was determined from magnetization, magneto-transport and the first single-crystal specific heat measurements. A zero-temperature in-plane coherence length of 8 nm is determined. The superconducting anisotropy increases from a value around 2 near Tc to above 4.5 at 22 K. For H||c a pronounced peak effect in the critical current occurs at the upper critical field. Evidence for a surface superconducting state is presented for H||c which might account for the wide spread in reported values of the anisotropy.
We report measurements of the field and angular dependences of Jc of truly epitaxial Co-doped BaFe2As2 thin films grown on SrTiO3/(La,Sr)(Al,Ta)O3 with different SrTiO3 template thicknesses. The films show Jc comparable to Jc of single crystals and a maximum pinning force Fp(0.6Tc) > 5 GN/m3 at H/Hirr ~ 0.5 indicative of strong vortex pinning effective up to high fields. Due to the strong correlated c-axis pinning, Jc for field along the c-axis exceeds Jc for H//ab plane, inverting the expectation of the Hc2 anisotropy. HRTEM reveals that the strong vortex pinning is due to a high density of nanosize columnar defects.
Conformal crystals are non-uniform structures created by a conformal transformation of regular two-dimensional lattices. We show that gradient-driven vortices interacting with a conformal pinning array exhibit substantially stronger pinning effects over a much larger range of field than found for random or periodic pinning arrangements. The pinning enhancement is partially due to matching of the critical flux gradient with the pinning gradient, but the preservation of the sixfold ordering in the conformally transformed hexagonal lattice plays a crucial role. Our results can be generalized to a wide class of gradient-driven interacting particle systems such as colloids on optical trap arrays.