Structural and electronic properties of (NH3)xK3C60

We have investigated the synthesis, structure, and electronic properties of (NH3)xK3C60 by exposing preformed K3C60 to NH3 vapor. Measurements were made on bulk powders and films with a variety of techniques including in-situ x-ray diffraction and monitoring of NH3 pressure, Raman scattering and ac susceptibility. The reaction of NH3 with K3C60 is completely reversible and leaves the (C60)3- charge state intact, while allowing the distance between the C60 molecules to vary. We observe two different crystallographic structures at x=1 and x=8-10. The x=1 structure is face-centered orthorhombic with a single NH3 on the octahedral interstitial site. It is single phase at 100°C and NH3 pressures 400 torr and remains single phase at 0 torr if the temperature is reduced to 25°C. Although (NH3)K3C60 exhibits no superconductivity at ambient pressure, superconductivity can be induced by hydrostatic pressure with an onset at 28 K. The details of the x=8-10 structure are uncertain, however it appears that this phase is body-centered tetragonal with NH3 on both the octahedral and tetrahedral sites. It occurs at room temperature and NH3 pressures 500 torr, but is not stable at lower NH3 pressures. Resistivity measurements of NH3-doped K3C60 films show that the formation of the new structure results in a rapid increase of the resistivity to values exceeding 1 cm

Correlation gap in the heavy-fermion antiferromagnet UPd_2Al_3

The optical properties of the heavy-fermion compound UPd$_2$Al$_3$ have been measured in the frequency range from 0.04 meV to 5 meV (0.3 to 40 cm$^{-1}$) at temperatures $2 {\rm K}<T< 300$ K. Below the coherence temperature $T^*\approx 50$ K, the hybridization gap opens around 10 meV. As the temperature decreases further ($T\leq 20$ K), a well pronounced pseudogap of approximately 0.2 meV develops in the optical response; we relate this to the antiferromagnetic ordering which occurs below $T_N\approx 14$ K. The frequency dependent mass and scattering rate give evidence that the enhancement of the effective mass mainly occurs below the energy which is associated to the magnetic correlations between the itinerant and localized 5f electrons. In addition to this correlation gap, we observe a narrow zero-frequency conductivity peak which at 2 K is less than 0.1 meV wide, and which contains only a fraction of the delocalized carriers. The analysis of the spectral weight infers a loss of kinetic energy associated with the superconducting transition.Comment: RevTex, 15 pages, 7 figure

Carrier relaxation, pseudogap, and superconducting gap in high-Tc cuprates: A Raman scattering study

We describe results of electronic Raman-scattering experiments in differently doped single crystals of Y-123 and Bi-2212. The comparison of AF insulating and metallic samples suggests that at least the low-energy part of the spectra originates predominantly from excitations of free carriers. We therefore propose an analysis of the data in terms of a memory function approach. Dynamical scattering rates and mass-enhancement factors for the carriers are obtained. In B2g symmetry the Raman data compare well to the results obtained from ordinary and optical transport. For underdoped materials the dc scattering rates in B1g symmetry become temperature independent and considerably larger than in B2g symmetry. This increasing anisotropy is accompanied by a loss of spectral weight in B2g symmetry in the range between the superconducting transition at Tc and a characteristic temperature T* of order room temperature which compares well with the pseudogap temperature found in other experiments. The energy range affected by the pseudogap is doping and temperature independent. The integrated spectral loss is approximately 25% in underdoped samples and becomes much weaker towards higher carrier concentration. In underdoped samples, superconductivity related features in the spectra can be observed only in B2g symmetry. The peak frequencies scale with Tc. We do not find a direct relation between the pseudogap and the superconducting gap.Comment: RevTeX, 21 pages, 24 gif figures. For PostScript with embedded eps figures, see http://www.wmi.badw-muenchen.de/~opel/k2.htm

Superconductivity at 40K in Cesium Doped C60

We report superconductivity in Cs3C60 at 40K using ac susceptibility measurements under hydrostatic conditions up to 15 kbar. Cs3C60 was prepared by reaction of C60 with Cs in liquid ammonia, followed by heating at 150°C. This route circumvents formation of the energetically more stable Cs1C60 and Cs4C60 phases. We have studied the synthesis and phase formation by measuring the symmetric Ag pentagonal pinch mode of C60 using Raman spectroscopy. Whereas Raman spectroscopy indicates homogeneous charge transfer of three electrons, x-ray diffraction indicates two phases other than the commonly observed fcc structure. This superconducting transition temperature is considerably higher than for known doped C60 compounds and intermetallic compounds.

Structural and electronic properties of (NH3)xK3C60

We have investigated the synthesis, structure, and electronic properties of (NH3)xK3C60 by exposing preformed K3C60 to NH3 vapor. Measurements were made on bulk powders and films with a variety of techniques including in-situ x-ray diffraction and monitoring of NH3 pressure, Raman scattering and ac susceptibility. The reaction of NH3 with K3C60 is completely reversible and leaves the (C60)3– charge state intact, while allowing the distance between the C60 molecules to vary. We observe two different crystallographic structures at x = 1 and x = 8–10. The x = 1 structure is face-centered orthorhombic with a single NH3 on the octahedral interstitial site. It is single phase at 100°C and NH3 pressures ≥400 torr and remains single phase at 0 torr if the temperature is reduced to 25 °C. Although (NH3)K3C60 exhibits no superconductivity at ambient pressure, superconductivity can be induced by hydrostatic pressure with an onset at 28 K. The details of the x = 8–10 structure are uncertain, however it appears that this phase is body-centered tetragonal with NH3 on both the octahedral and tetrahedral sites. It occurs at room temperature and NH3 pressures ≥500 torr, but is not stable at lower NH3 pressures. Resistivity measurements of NH3-doped K3C60 films show that the formation of the new structure results in a rapid increase of the resistivity to values exceeding 1 Ω cm.

Far-infrared reflectivity of sintered YBa2Cu3O7 in the normal and superconducting state

We report on a study of the far-infrared reflection for a sintered YBa2Cu3O7 sample that contained a large portion of preferentially oriented crystallites with thea–b plane parallel to the surface and that showed extraordinary high far-infrared reflectivity. From experimental reflection data we determined, by Kramers-Kronig analysis, the dynamical conductivity and extracted the contributions due to free charge carriers and phonons, respectively. We find evidence for an anomalous behavior of the dynamical conductivity at temperatures aboveT c ; the dynamical conductivity increases strongly for temperatures approachingT c and is strongly frequency dependent. By use of the Mattis-Bardeen theory we obtain an estimate for the superconducting energy gap of 2Delta/kT c sime4.6 (forTLtT c ). We find that the lowest frequency infrared-active phonon mode is less damped in the superconducting state than in the normal state