38 research outputs found
Titanium additions to MgB2 conductors
A series of doping experiments are reported for MgB2 conductors that have
been synthesized using doped boron fibers prepared by chemical vapor
deposition(CVD) methods. Undoped MgB2 samples prepared from CVD prepared fibers
consistently give critical current densities, Jc, in the range of 500,000
A/cm^2 in low field at 5K. These values fall by a factor of about 100 as the
magnetic field increases to 3T. For heavily Ti-doped boron fibers where the
B/Ti ratio is comparable to 1, there is a substantial suppression of both Tc,
superconducting volume fraction, and Jc values. If, however, a sample with a
few percent Ti in B is deposited on a carbon coated SiC substrate and reacted
at 1100 degrees C for 15 min, then Tc is suppressed only a couple of degrees
Kelvin and critical current densities are found to be approximately 2-5 x 10^6
A/cm^2 for superconducting layers ranging from 4-10 micrometers thick. These
materials show Jc values over 10,000 A/cm^2 at 25K and 1.3 T.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure
Synthesis and Processing of powders and wires
Sintered powders and wires of superconducting have been fabricated
under a variety of conditions in order to determine details of the diffusion of
the into and to study the types of defects that arise during growth.
For samples prepared by exposure of boron to vapor at , the
conversion of particles of less than size particles to is
complete in about . The lattice parameters of the phase determined
from X-ray are independent of the starting stoichiometry and the time of
reaction. Wire segments of with very little porosity have been produced
by reacting diameter boron fibers in an atmosphere of excess
vapor at . Defects in the reacted fibers are predominantly the
voids left as the boron is converted to
Superconductivity in MgB_2 doped with Ti and C
Measurements of the superconducting upper critical field, H_{c2}, and
critical current density, J_c, have been carried out for MgB_2 doped with Ti
and/or C in order to explore the problems encountered if these dopants are used
to enhance the superconducting performance. Carbon replaces boron in the MgB_2
lattice and apparently shortens the electronic mean free path thereby raising
H_c2. Titanium forms precipitates of either TiB or TiB_2 that enhance the flux
pinning and raise J_c. Most of these precipitates are intra-granular in the
MgB_2 phase. If approximately 0.5% Ti and approximately 2% C are co-deposited
with B to form doped boron fibers and these fibers are in turn reacted in Mg
vapor to form MgB_2, the resulting superconductor has H_{c2}(T=0) ~ 25 T and
J_c ~ 10,000 A/cm**2 at 5 K and 2.2 T.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure
High Pressure Study on MgB2
The hydrostatic pressure effect on the newly discovered superconductor MgB2
has been determined. The transition temperature Tc was found to decrease
linearly at a large rate of -1.6 K/GPa, in good quantitative agreement with the
ensuing calculated value of -1.4 K/GPa within the BCS framework by Loa and
Syassen, using the full-potential linearlized augmented plane-wave method. The
relative pressure coefficient, dlnTc/dp, for MgB2 also falls between the known
values for conventional sp- and d-superconductors. The observation, therefore,
suggests that electron-phonon interaction plays a significant role in the
superconductivity of the compound.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures; submitted to Physical Review B (February 14,
2001; revised March 21, 2001); minor modifications, including a discussion of
the preprint by Vogt et a
An Overview of the Basic Physical Properties of MgB
The basic physical properties of MgB have been well established over the
past two years of intensive research. At this point there is a general
consensus about the values for the isotope shift, critical fields, most of the
salient length scales, and general anisotropies. In this paper we will review
the determination of these parameters and set the stage for further, more
detailed discussions of specific aspects of the physics of MgB.Comment: accepted to Physica C, special MgB2 iss
The Average Kinetic Energy of the Superconducting State
Isothermal magnetization curves are plotted as the magnetization times the
magnetic induction, , versus the applied field, H. We show
here that this new curve is the average kinetic energy of the superconducting
state versus the applied field, for type-II superconductors with a high
Ginzburg-Landau parameter . The maximum of occurs at
a field, , directly related to the upper critical field, ,
suggesting that may be extracted from such plots even in cases when
it is too high for direct measurement. We obtain these plots both
theoretically, from the Ginzburg-Landau theory, and experimentally, using a
Niobium sample with , and compare them.Comment: 11 pages, 9 postscript figure
Prominent bulk pinning effect in the MgB_2 superconductor
We report the magnetic-field dependence of the irreversible magnetization of
the recently discovered binary superconductor MgB. For the temperature
region of , the contribution of the bulk pinning to the
magnetization overwhelms that of the surface pinning. This was evident from the
fact that the magnetization curves, , were well described by the
critical-state model without considering the surface pinning effect. It was
also found that the curves at various temperatures scaled when the field
and the magnetization were normalized by the characteristic scaling factors
and , respectively. This feature suggests that the
pinning mechanism determining the hysteresis in is unique below .Comment: 4pages and 4 figures. Phys. Rev. B (accepted
Dielectric functions and collective excitations in MgB_2
The frequency- and momentum-dependent dielectric function as well as the energy loss function Im[-\protect{]} are calculated for intermetallic superconductor
by using two {\it ab initio} methods: the plane-wave pseudopotential method and
the tight-binding version of the LMTO method. We find two plasmon modes
dispersing at energies -8 eV and -22 eV. The high energy
plasmon results from a free electron like plasmon mode while the low energy
collective excitation has its origin in a peculiar character of the band
structure. Both plasmon modes demonstrate clearly anisotropic behaviour of both
the peak position and the peak width. In particular, the low energy collective
excitation has practically zero width in the direction perpendicular to boron
layers and broadens in other directions.Comment: 3 pages with 10 postscript figures. Submitted to PRB on May 14 200
Determination of superconducting anisotropy from magnetization data on random powders as applied to LuNiBC, YNiBC and MgB
The recently discovered intermetallic superconductor MgB2 appears to have a
highly anisotopic upper critical field with Hc2(max)/Hc2(min} = \gamma > 5. In
order to determine the temperature dependence of both Hc2(max) and Hc2(min) we
propose a method of extracting the superconducting anisotropy from the
magnetization M(H,T) of randomly oriented powder samples. The method is based
on two features in dM/dT the onset of diamagnetism at Tc(max), that is commonly
associated with Hc2, and a kink in dM/dT at a lower temperature Tc(min).
Results for LuNi2B2C and YNi2B2C powders are in agreement with anisotropic Hc2
obtained from magneto-transport measurements on single crystals. Using this
method on four different types of MgB2 powder samples we are able to determine
Hc2(max)(T) and Hc2(min)(T) with \gamma \approx 6
Angular dependence of the bulk nucleation field Hc2 of aligned MgB2 crystallites
Studies on the new MgB2 superconductor, with a critical temperature Tc ~ 39
K, have evidenced its potential for applications although intense magnetic
relaxation effects limit the critical current density, Jc, at high magnetic
fields. This means that effective pinning centers must be added into the
material microstructure, in order to halt dissipative flux movements.
Concerning the basic microscopic mechanism to explain the superconductivity in
MgB2, several experimental and theoretical works have pointed to the relevance
of a phonon-mediated interaction, in the framework of the BCS theory. Questions
have been raised about the relevant phonon modes, and the gap and Fermi surface
anisotropies, in an effort to interpret spectroscopic and thermal data that
give values between 2.4 and 4.5 for the gap energy ratio. Preliminary results
on the anisotropy of Hc2 have shown a ratio, between the in-plane and
perpendicular directions, around 1.7 for aligned MgB2 crystallites and 1.8 for
epitaxial thin films. Here we show a study on the angular dependence of Hc2
pointing to a Fermi velocity anisotropy around 2.5. This anisotropy certainly
implies the use of texturization techniques to optimize Jc in MgB2 wires and
other polycrystalline components.Comment: 10 pages + 4 Figs.; Revised version accepted in Phys. Rev.