111 research outputs found
Superconductivity in doped sp3 semiconductors: The case of the clathrates
We present a joint experimental and theoretical study of the superconductivity in doped silicon clathrates. The critical temperature in Ba-8@Si-46 is shown to strongly decrease with applied pressure. These results are corroborated by ab initio calculations using MacMillan's formulation of the BCS theory with the electron-phonon coupling constant lambda calculated from perturbative density functional theory. Further, the study of I-8@Si-46 and of gedanken pure silicon diamond and clathrate phases doped within a rigid-band approach show that the superconductivity is an intrinsic property of the sp(3) silicon network. As a consequence, carbon clathrates are predicted to yield large critical temperatures with an effective electron-phonon interaction much larger than in C-60
Chiral skyrmions in thin magnetic films: new objects for magnetic storage technologies?
Axisymmetric magnetic lines of nanometer sizes (chiral vortices or skyrmions)
have been predicted to exist in a large group of noncentrosymmetric crystals
more than two decades ago. Recently these magnetic textures have been directly
observed in nanolayers of cubic helimagnets and monolayers of magnetic metals.
We develop a micromagnetic theory of chiral skyrmions in thin magnetic layers
for magnetic materials with intrinsic and induced chirality. Such particle-like
and stable micromagnetic objects can exist in broad ranges of applied magnetic
fields including zero field. Chiral skyrmions can be used as a new type of
highly mobile nanoscale data carriers
Interesting magnetic properties of FeCoSi alloys
Solid solution between nonmagnetic narrow gap semiconductor FeSi and
diamagnetic semi-metal CoSi gives rise to interesting metallic alloys with
long-range helical magnetic ordering, for a wide range of intermediate
concentration. We report various interesting magnetic properties of these
alloys, including low temperature re-entrant spin-glass like behaviour and a
novel inverted magnetic hysteresis loop. Role of Dzyaloshinski-Moriya
interaction in the magnetic response of these non-centrosymmetric alloys is
discussed.Comment: 11 pages and 3 figure
Doping a semiconductor to create an unconventional metal
Landau Fermi liquid theory, with its pivotal assertion that electrons in
metals can be simply understood as independent particles with effective masses
replacing the free electron mass, has been astonishingly successful. This is
true despite the Coulomb interactions an electron experiences from the host
crystal lattice, its defects, and the other ~1022/cm3 electrons. An important
extension to the theory accounts for the behaviour of doped semiconductors1,2.
Because little in the vast literature on materials contradicts Fermi liquid
theory and its extensions, exceptions have attracted great attention, and they
include the high temperature superconductors3, silicon-based field effect
transistors which host two-dimensional metals4, and certain rare earth
compounds at the threshold of magnetism5-8. The origin of the non-Fermi liquid
behaviour in all of these systems remains controversial. Here we report that an
entirely different and exceedingly simple class of materials - doped small gap
semiconductors near a metal-insulator transition - can also display a non-Fermi
liquid state. Remarkably, a modest magnetic field functions as a switch which
restores the ordinary disordered Fermi liquid. Our data suggest that we have
finally found a physical realization of the only mathematically rigourous route
to a non-Fermi liquid, namely the 'undercompensated Kondo effect', where there
are too few mobile electrons to compensate for the spins of unpaired electrons
localized on impurity atoms9-12.Comment: 17 pages 4 figures supplemental information included with 2 figure
Large Anomalous Hall effect in a silicon-based magnetic semiconductor
Magnetic semiconductors are attracting high interest because of their
potential use for spintronics, a new technology which merges electronics and
manipulation of conduction electron spins. (GaMn)As and (GaMn)N have recently
emerged as the most popular materials for this new technology. While Curie
temperatures are rising towards room temperature, these materials can only be
fabricated in thin film form, are heavily defective, and are not obviously
compatible with Si. We show here that it is productive to consider transition
metal monosilicides as potential alternatives. In particular, we report the
discovery that the bulk metallic magnets derived from doping the narrow gap
insulator FeSi with Co share the very high anomalous Hall conductance of
(GaMn)As, while displaying Curie temperatures as high as 53 K. Our work opens
up a new arena for spintronics, involving a bulk material based only on
transition metals and Si, and which we have proven to display a variety of
large magnetic field effects on easily measured electrical properties.Comment: 19 pages with 5 figure
Surface-dominated conduction up to 240 K in the Kondo insulator SmB6 under strain
SmB6 is a strongly correlated mixed-valence Kondo insulator with a newly discovered surface state, proposed to be of non-trivial topological origin. However, the surface state dominates electrical conduction only below T∗ ≈ 4 K (ref. ), limiting its scientific investigation and device application. Here, we report the enhancement of T∗ in SmB6 under the application of tensile strain. With 0.7% tensile strain we report surface-dominated conduction at up to a temperature of 240 K, persisting even after the strain has been removed. This can be explained in the framework of strain-tuned temporal and spatial fluctuations of f-electron configurations, which might be generally applied to other mixed-valence materials. We note that this amount of strain can be induced in epitaxial SmB6 films via substrate in potential device applications
High field, high pressure magnetic properties of UAl2
Nous avons mesuré l'aimantation de UAl2 sous champ fort (jusqu'à 150 kG) et sous haute pression hydrostatique (jusqu'à 7 kbar). La compressibilité de UAl2 a également été déterminée jusqu'à 4 K.Measurements are reported of the magnetization of UAl2 under high field (up to 150 kG) and high hydrostatic pressure (up to 7 kbar). The compressibility of UAl2 has also been determined down to 4 K
Analyse de la répartition des contraintes dans un échantillon soumis à une compression uniaxiale. Étude de la variation des températures d'ordre magnétiques du terbium et du dysprosium avec les contraintes uniaxiales
Nous avons mesuré la variation avec les contraintes uniaxiales de la température de Néel du terbium et de la température de transition ferromagnétique-hélimagnétique du dysprosium. Dans une étude préliminaire nous avons déterminé par photoélasticité la répartition des contraintes à l'intérieur d'échantillons en résine photoélastique de forme cubique ou sphérique
- …