No Arabic abstract
Electrical resistivity measurements as a function of temperature between 1 K and 300 K were performed at various pressures up to 3 GPa on the superconducting layered compounds Ln(O0.5F0.5)BiS2 (Ln = La, Ce). At atmospheric pressure, La(O0.5F0.5)BiS2 and Ce(O0.5F0.5)BiS2 have superconducting critical temperatures, Tc, of 3.3 K and 2.3 K, respectively. For both compounds, the superconducting critical temperature Tc initially increases, reaches a maximum value of 10.1 K for La(O0.5F0.5)BiS2 and 6.7 K for CeO(0.5F0.5)BiS2, and then gradually decreases with increasing pressure. Both samples also exhibit transient behavior in the region between the lower Tc phase near atmospheric pressure and the higher Tc phase. This region is characterized by a broadening of the superconducting transition, in which Tc and the transition width, delta Tc, are reversible with increasing and decreasing pressure. There is also an appreciable pressure-induced and hysteretic suppression of semiconducting behavior up to the pressure at which the maximum value of Tc is found. At pressures above the value at which the maximum in Tc occurs, there is a gradual decrease of Tc and further suppression of the semiconducting behavior with pressure, both of which are reversible.
Measurements of electrical resistivity were performed between 3 and 300 K at various pressures up to 2.8 GPa on the BiS2-based superconductors LnO0.5F0.5BiS2 (Ln = Pr, Nd). At lower pressures, PrO0.5F0.5BiS2 and NdO0.5F0.5BiS2 exhibit superconductivity with critical temperatures Tc of 3.5 and3.9 K, respectively. As pressure is increased, both compounds undergo a transition at a pressure Pt from a low Tc superconducting phase to a high Tc superconducting phase in which Tc reaches maximum values of 7.6 and 6.4 K for PrO0.5F0.5BiS2 and NdO0.5F0.5BiS2, respectively. The pressure-induced transition is characterized by a rapid increase in Tc within a small range in pressure of ~0.3 GPa for both compounds. In the normal state of PrO0.5F0.5BiS2, the transition pressure Pt correlates with the pressure where the suppression of semiconducting behaviour saturates. In the normal state of NdO0.5F0.5BiS2, Pt is coincident with a semiconductor-metal transition. This behaviour is similar to the results recently reported for the LnO0.5F0.5BiS2 (Ln = La, Ce) compounds. We observe that Pt and the size of the jump in Tc between the two superconducting phases both scale with the lanthanide element in LnO0.5F0.5BiS2 (Ln = La, Ce, Pr, Nd).
We investigate the effect of external pressure on magnetic order in undoped LnFeAsO (Ln = La, Ce, Pr, La) by using muon-spin relaxation measurements and ab-initio calculations. Both magnetic transition temperature $T_m$ and Fe magnetic moment decrease with external pressure. The effect is observed to be lanthanide dependent with the strongest response for Ln = La and the weakest for Ln = Sm. The trend is qualitatively in agreement with our DFT calculations. The same calculations allow us to assign a value of 0.68(2) $mu_B$ to the Fe moment, obtained from an accurate determination of the muon sites. Our data further show that the magnetic lanthanide order transitions do not follow the simple trend of Fe, possibly as a consequence of the different $f$-electron overlap.
A large number of compounds which contain BiS$_{2}$ layers exhibit enhanced superconductivity upon electron doping. Much interest and research effort has been focused on BiS$_{2}$-based compounds which provide new opportunities for exploring the nature of superconductivity. Important to the study of BiS$_{2}$-based superconductors is the relation between structure and superconductivity. By modifying either the superconducting BiS$_2$ layers or the blocking layers in these layered compounds, one can effectively tune the lattice parameters, local atomic environment, electronic structure, and other physical properties of these materials. In this article, we will review some of the recent progress on research of the effects of chemical substitution in BiS$_{2}$-based compounds, with special attention given to the compounds in the $Ln$OBiS$_{2}$ ($Ln$ = La-Nd) system. Strategies which are reported to be essential in optimizing superconductivity of these materials will also be discussed.
We prepared the samples K$_{1-x}$Ln$_{x}$Fe$_2$As$_2$ (Ln=Sm, Nd and La) with ThCr$_2$Si$_2$-type structure. These samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction, resistivity, susceptibility and thermoelectric power (TEP). Substitution of Ln (Ln=La, Nd and Sm) for K in K$_{1-x}$Ln$_{x}$Fe$_2$As$_2$ system raises the superconducting transition temperature to 34-36 K. The TEP measurements indicate that the TEP of K$_{1-x}$Ln$_{x}$Fe$_2$As$_2$ is positive, being similar to the case of the Ba$_{1-x}$K$_{x}$Fe$_2$As$_2$ system with p-type carrier. In the K$_{1-x}$Ln$_{x}$Fe$_2$As$_2$ system, the superconducting $KFe_2As_2$ with $T_csim 3$ K is the parent compound, and no structural and spin-density wave instabilities exist in this system.
Neutron powder diffraction (NPD) study of textit{Ln}MnSbO (textit{Ln }$=$ La or Ce) reveals differences between the magnetic ground state of the two compounds due to the strong Ce-Mn coupling compared to La-Mn. The two compounds adopt the textit{P4/nmm} space group down to 2 K and whereas magnetization measurements do not show obvious anomaly at high temperatures, NPD reveals a C-type antiferromagnetic (AFM) order below $T_{mathrm{N}} = 255 $ K for LaMnSbO and 240 K for CeMnSbO. While the magnetic structure of LaMnSbO is preserved to base temperature, a sharp transition at $T_{mathrm{SR}} = 4.5 $K is observed in CeMnSbO due to a spin-reorientation (SR) transition of the Mn$^{mathrm{2+}}$ magnetic moments from pointing along the $c$-axis to the textit{ab}-plane. The SR transition in CeMnSbO is accompanied by a simultaneous long-range AFM ordering of the Ce moments which indicates that the Mn SR transition is driven by the Ce-Mn coupling. The ordered moments are found to be somewhat smaller than those expected for Mn$^{mathrm{2+}}$ ($S = 5/2$) in insulators, but large enough to suggest that these compounds belong to the class of local-moment antiferromagnets. The lower $T_{mathrm{Nthinspace }}$ found in these two compounds compared to the As-based counterparts ($T_{mathrm{N}} = 317$ for LaMnAsO, $T_{mathrm{N}} = 347$ K for CeMnAsO) indicates that the Mn-$Pn$ ($Pn=$ As or Sb) hybridization that mediates the superexchange Mn-$Pn$-Mn coupling is weaker for the Sb-based compounds.