No Arabic abstract
We present heat capacity measurements on a series of superconducting Cu$_x$TiSe$_2$ single crystals with different Cu content down to 600 mK and up to 1 T performed by ac microcalorimetry. The samples cover a large portion of the phase diagram from an underdoped to a slightly overdoped region with an increasing superconducting critical temperature and the charge density wave (CDW) order gradually suppressed. The electronic heat capacity as a function of normalized temperature $T/T_c$ shows no difference regardless of the concentration of copper, i.e., regardless of how much the CDW order is developed in the samples. The data analysis reveals consistently a single s-wave gap with an intermediate coupling strength $2Delta/k_BT_c$ = 3.7 for all samples.
We report mainly the heat capacity and Mossbauer study of self flux grown FeTe single crystal, which is ground state compound of the Fe chalcogenides superconducting series, i.e., FeTe1-x(Se/S)x. The as grown FeTe single crystal is large enough to the tune of few cm and the same crystallizes in tetragonal structure having space group of P4/nmm. FeTe shows the structural/magnetic phase transition at 70K in both magnetic and resistivity measurements. Heat capacity measurement also confirms the coupled structural/magnetic transition at the same temperature. The Debye model fitting of low temperature (below 70K) heat capacity exhibited Debye temperature to be 324K. MOssbauer spectra are performed at 300K and 5K. The 300K spectra showed two paramagnetic doublets and the 5K spectra exhibited hyperfine magnetic sextet with an average hyperfine field of 10.6Tesla matching with the results of Yoshikazu Mizuguchi et al.
Single crystal of Cu0.03TaS2 with low copper intercalated content was successfully grown via chemical iodine-vapor transport. The structural characterization results show that the copper intercalated 2H-Cu0.03TaS2 single crystal has the same structure of the CdI2-type structure as the parent 2H-TaS2 crystal. Electrical resistivity and magnetization measurements reveal that 2H-Cu0.03TaS2 becomes a superconductor below 4.2 K. Besides, electrical resistivity and Hall effects results show that a charge density wave transition occurs at TCDW = 50 K.
We have investigated the magnetization properties and flux dynamics of superconducting Cu$_x$TiSe$_2$ single crystals within wide range of copper concentrations. We find that the superconducting anisotropy is low and independent on copper concentration ($gammasim1.7$), except in the case of strongly underdoped samples ($xleq0.06$) that show a gradual increase in anisotropy to $gammasim1.9$. The vortex phase diagram in this material is characterized by broad region of vortex liquid phase that is unusual for such low-$T_c$ superconductor with low anisotropy. Below the irreversibility line the vortex solid state supports relatively low critical current densities as compared to the depairing current limit ($J_c/J_0sim10^{-7}$). All this points out that local fluctuations in copper concentration have little effect on bulk pinning properties in this system.
The in-plane thermal conductivity of iron-based superconductor RbFe$_2$As$_2$ single crystal ($T_c approx$ 2.1 K) was measured down to 100 mK. In zero field, the observation of a significant residual linear term $kappa_0/T$ = 0.65 mW K$^{-2}$ cm$^{-1}$ provides clear evidence for nodal superdonducting gap. The field dependence of $kappa_0/T$ is similar to that of its sister compound CsFe$_2$As$_2$ with comparable residual resistivity $rho_0$, and lies between the dirty and clean KFe$_2$As$_2$. These results suggest that the (K,Rb,Cs)Fe$_2$As$_2$ serial superconductors have a common nodal gap structure.
We present specific heat measurements on a series of BaFe2(As1-xPx)2 single crystals with phosphorous doping ranging from x = 0.3 to 0.55. Our results reveal that BaFe2(As1-xPx)2 follows the scaling Delta_C/Tc ~ Tc^2 remarkably well. The clean-limit nature of this material imposes new restraints on theories aimed at explaining the scaling. Furthermore, we find that the Ginzburg-Landau parameter decreases significantly with doping whereas the superconducting anisotropy is gamma~2.6, independent of doping.