Very high upper critical fields in MgB2 produced by selective tuning of impurity scattering


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We report a significant enhancement of the upper critical field $H_{c2}$ of different $MgB_2$ samples alloyed with nonmagnetic impurities. By studying films and bulk polycrystals with different resistivities $rho$, we show a clear trend of $H_{c2}$ increase as $rho$ increases. One particular high resistivity film had zero-temperature $H_{c2}(0)$ well above the $H_{c2}$ values of competing non-cuprate superconductors such as $Nb_3Sn$ and Nb-Ti. Our high-field transport measurements give record values $H_{c2}^perp (0) approx 34T$ and $H_{c2}|(0) approx 49 T$ for high resistivity films and $H_{c2}(0)approx 29 T$ for untextured bulk polycrystals. The highest $H_{c2}$ film also exhibits a significant upward curvature of $H_{c2}(T)$, and temperature dependence of the anisotropy parameter $gamma(T) = H_{c2}|/ H_{c2}^perp$ opposite to that of single crystals: $gamma(T)$ decreases as the temperature decreases, from $gamma(T_c) approx 2$ to $gamma(0) approx 1.5$. This remarkable $H_{c2}$ enhancement and its anomalous temperature dependence are a consequence of the two-gap superconductivity in $MgB_2$, which offers special opportunities for further $H_{c2}$ increase by tuning of the impurity scattering by selective alloying on Mg and B sites. Our experimental results can be explained by a theory of two-gap superconductivity in the dirty limit. The very high values of $H_{c2}(T)$ observed suggest that $MgB_2$ can be made into a versatile, competitive high-field superconductor.

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