Upper critical field and anisotropy in carbon alloyed MgB$_2$ thin films

ORAL

Abstract

We have studied the upper critical field and its anisotropy $\gamma$ of C-alloyed MgB$_2$ thin films grown on (0001) SiC single crystal substrates by hybrid physical-chemical vapor deposition (HPCVD). Different concentrations of C were introduced during the deposition, which increased the residual resistivity systematically but did not affect $T_c$ seriously. The upper critical field was found to increase to above 60 T for $H$ parallel to the ab plane and up to $\sim$ 40T for $H$ parallel to the $c$ axis with even moderate amounts of C doping. Moreover, we show that $H_{c2}$ stays at these levels in a wide range of C doping. The $H_{c2}$ anisotropy was found to decrease as the C concentration increases. The $H_{c2}(T)$ curves for both $H \parallel ab$ and $H \parallel c$ directions were explained by a theoretical model of dirty limit two band superconductivity, which takes into account different scattering rates in $\pi$ and $\sigma$ bands, as well as interband scattering. The differences in the $H_{c2}(T)$ and $\gamma (T)$ for different samples can be explained by the differences of the relative scattering rates in each band which make it possible to adjust the $\pi$ and $\sigma$ scattering such that $H_{c2}$ perpendicular to $ab$ can attain almost 20T at 20K.

Authors

  • Alexej Pogrebnyakov

    Department of Physics and Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University

  • Joan Redwing

    Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, Department of Materials Sciene and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, The Pennsylvania State University

  • Xiaoxing Xi

    Department of Physics and Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, Department of Physics and Department of Materials Sciene and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, The Pennsylvania State University, Penn State University

  • Alex Gurevich

    University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI

  • David Larbalestier

    University of Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin - Madison

  • J. B. Betts

    NHMFL Los Alamos

  • C. H. Mielke

    Los Alamos National Lab

  • Qi Li

    Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, PA16801, Physics, The Pennsylvania State University, Department of Physics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania State University

  • Valeria Ferrando

    CNR-INFM-LAMIA, University of Genova

  • Jun Chen