422 research outputs found
Competition between Superconductivity and Charge Density Wave Ordering in the LuIr(SiGe) Alloy System
We have performed bulk measurements such as dc magnetic susceptibility,
electrical resistivity and heat capacity on the pseudo-ternary alloys
LuIr(SiGe) to study the interplay and competition
between superconductivity and the charge density wave (CDW) ordering
transition. We track the evolution of the superconducting transition
temperature T and the CDW ordering temperature T as a function
of x (concentration of Ge) (). We find that increasing x
(increasing disorder) suppresses the T rapidly with the concomitant
increase in T. We present a temperature-concentration (or volume) phase
diagram for this system and compare our results with earlier work on
substitution at the Lu or Ir site to show how dilution at the Si site presents
a different situation from these other works. The heat capacity data in the
vicinity of the CDW transition has been analyzed using a model of critical
fluctuations in addition to a mean-field contribution and a smooth lattice
background. We find that the critical exponents change appreciably with
increasing disorder. This analysis suggests that the strong-coupling and non
mean-field like CDW transition in the parent compound LuIrSi
changes to a mean-field like transition with increasing Ge concentration.Comment: 14 pages and 8 figures. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Phase transitions in LuIrSi
We report the results of our investigations on a polycrystalline sample of
LuIrSi which crystallizes in the UCoSi type structure
(Ibam). These investigations comprise powder X-ray diffraction, magnetic
susceptibility, electrical resistivity and high temperature (120-300 K) heat
capacity studies. Our results reveal that the sample undergoes a
superconducting transition below 3.5 K. It also undergoes a first order phase
transition between 150-250 K as revealed by an upturn in the resistivity, a
diasmagnetic drop in the magnetic susceptibility and a large anomaly (20-30
J/mol K) in the specific heat data. We observe a huge thermal hysteresis of
almost 45 K between the cooling and warming data across this high temperature
transition in all our measurements. Low temperature X-ray diffraction
measurements at 87 K reveals that the compound undergoes a structural change at
the high temperature transition. Resistivity data taken in repeated cooling and
warming cycles indicate that at the high temperature transition, the system
goes into a highly metastable state and successive heating/cooling curves are
found to lie above the previous one and the resistance keeps increasing with
every thermal cycle. The room temperature resistance of a thermaly cycled piece
of the sample decays exponentialy with time with a decay time constant
estimated to be about 10 secs. The anomaly (upturn) in the resistivity and
the large drop (almost 45%) in the susceptibility across the high temperature
transition suggest that the observed structural change is accompanied or
induced by an electronic transition.Comment: 7 figures, 1 table and 18 reference
Crystal growth and ambient and high pressure study of the reentrant superconductor Tm_2Fe_3Si_5
We report single crystal growth of the reentrant superconductor Tm_2Fe_3Si_5,
and measurements of the anisotropic static magnetic susceptibility \chi(T) and
isothermal magnetization M(H), ac susceptibility \chi_ac(T), electrical
resistivity \rho(T) and heat capacity C(T) at ambient pressure and \chi_ac(T)
at high pressure. The magnetic susceptibility along the c-axis \chi_c(T) shows
a small maximum around 250 K and does not follow the Curie-Weiss behavior while
the magnetic susceptibility along the a-axis \chi_a(T) follows a Curie-Weiss
behavior between 130 K and 300 K with a Weiss temperature \theta and an
effective magnetic moment \mu_eff which depend on the temperature range of the
fit. The easy axis of magnetization is perpendicular to the c-axis and
\chi_a/\chi_c = 3.2 at 1.8 K. The ambient pressure \chi_ac(T) and C(T)
measurements confirm bulk antiferromagnetic ordering at T_N = 1.1 K. The sharp
drop in \chi_ac below T_N is suggestive of the existence of a spin-gap. We
observe superconductivity only under applied pressures P\geq 2 kbar. The
temperature-pressure phase diagram showing the non-monotonic dependence of the
superconducting transition temperature T_c on pressure P is presented.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figure
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