Magnetotransport studies of superconducting Pr4Fe2As2Te1-xO4

We report a study of the electrical transport properties of single crystals of Pr(4)Fe(2)As(2)Te(1-)xO(4), a recently discovered iron-based superconductor. Resistivity, Hall effect, and magnetoresistance are measured in a broad temperature range revealing the role of electrons as dominant charge carriers. The significant temperature dependence of the Hall coefficient and the violation of Kohler's law indicate multiband effects in this compound. The upper critical field and the magnetic anisotropy are investigated in fields up to 16 T, applied parallel and perpendicular to the crystallographic c axis. Hydrostatic pressure up to 2 GPa linearly increases the critical temperature and the resistivity residual ratio. A simple two-band model is used to describe the transport and magnetic properties of Pr4Fe2As2Te1-xO4. The model can successfully explain the strongly temperature-dependent negative Hall coefficient and the high magnetic anisotropy, assuming that the mobility of electrons is higher than that of holes.

Upper critical field, pressure-dependent superconductivity and electronic anisotropy of Sm4Fe2As2Te1-xO4-yFy

László Forró, Richard Gaal, Janusz Andrzej Karpinski, Sergiy Katrych, Bálint Náfrádi, Andrea Pisoni, Péter Szirmai

We present a detailed study of the electrical transport properties of a recently discovered iron-based superconductor: Sm4Fe2As2Te0.72O2.8F1.2. We followed the temperature dependence of the upper critical field by resistivity measurement of single crystals in magnetic fields up to 16 T, oriented along the two main crystallographic directions. This material exhibits a zero-temperature upper critical field of 90 T and 65 T parallel and perpendicular to the Fe2As2 planes, respectively. An unprecedented superconducting magnetic anisotropy gamma(H) = H-c2(ab)/H-c2(c) similar to 14 is observed near T-c, and it decreases at lower temperatures as expected in multiband superconductors. Direct measurement of the electronic anisotropy was performed on microfabricated samples, showing a value of rho(c)/rho(ab) (300 K) similar to 5 that rises up to 19 near T-c. Finally, we have studied the pressure and temperature dependence of the in-plane resistivity. The critical temperature decreases linearly upon application of hydrostatic pressure (up to 2 GPa) similarly to overdoped cuprate superconductors. The resistivity shows saturation at high temperatures, suggesting that the material approaches the Mott-Ioffe-Regel limit for metallic conduction. Indeed, we have successfully modelled the resistivity in the normal state with a parallel resistor model that is widely accepted for this state. All the measured quantities suggest strong pressure dependence of the density of states.

Iop Publishing Ltd2016

Pressure-tuned Transport Properties of Novel Iron-based Superconductors and Topological Insulators

Andrea Pisoni

The majority of interactions in solids strongly depend on the interatomic distances. The application of pressure changes the lattice parameters and modifies the electronic and the phononic energy spectra of a material avoiding some of the undesirable effects induced by chemical doping, like lattice disorder, impurity phases and phase separations. Layered materials are particularly affected by the application of pressure because their anisotropic structure eases the contraction of the lattice along specific crystallographic directions. In this thesis I study the effect of pressure on the transport properties of two new layered materials: L4Fe2As2Te(1-x)O4 (L = Pr, Sm, Gd) superconductors and beta-Bi4I4 topological insulator. The discovery of Fe-based superconductors (Fe-SCs) provided a new material base for studying the mechanism of high temperature superconductivity. These materials present unexpectedly high critical temperatures (Tc ) despite the presence of magnetic atoms. The parent compounds of Fe-SCs are semimetals with an antiferromagnetic ground state in which the itinerant electrons form a periodic modulation of spin density called spin density wave (SDW). By changing the structural properties or by adding/removing carriers the SDW order can be suppressed and superconductivity emerges. Our group recently succeeded in synthesizing a new family of Fe-SCs that presents Tc up to 45 K upon optimum chemical doping and substitution. I performed a systematic study of the upper critical field and the pressure-dependent electrical resistivity of single crystals of Pr4Fe2As2Te(1-x)O4 and Sm4Fe2As2Te(1-x)O(4-y)Fy . Hall coefficient and magnetoresistance of Pr4Fe2As2Te(1-x)O4 revealed electrons as the dominant type of charge carriers. The results can be successfully fitted by a two-band model that allows the estimation of the temperature dependent electron and hole densities and mobilities. In view of the exceptionally high structural anisotropy of this new class of Fe-SCs I investigated the electronic anisotropy of Sm4Fe2As2Te(1-x)O(4-y)Fy by means of microfabrication techniques. The results show a ratio between the out-of-plane and in-plane electrical resistivities that is the highest reported so far in Fe-SCs. Topological insulators (TIs) form another class of materials that is currently attracting a lot of attention both for fundamental physics and potential applications. In TIs metallic surface states coexist with an insulating bulk. Most of the TIs known so far are either three-dimensional strongly bonded bulk materials or layered van der Waals crystals. Beta-Bi4I4 is a material composed of quasi-one-dimensional molecular chains that was theoretically predicted, and only recently experimentally verified, to be a novel strong topological insulator. Due to its particular structure, beta-Bi4I4 offers the possibility to study the interplay between different ground states like topological insulating phase, charge-density-wave and superconductivity. Here I present, for the first time, a study of the thermoelectric properties of beta-Bi4I4 single crystals. Electrical resistivity, Seebeck coefficient, thermal conductivity and Hall coefficient measurements reveal a possible charge density-wave-order (CDW) at low temperature. According to resistivity and thermoelectric power measurements, pressure suppresses the CDW order. Resistivity measurements performed in a diamond anvil cell up to 20 GPa demonstrate that superconductivity is induced in beta-Bi4I4 for pressure above 10 GPa. Preliminary X-ray diffraction measurements by synchrotron radiation, performed on the sample recovered at ambient pressure after the experiment, reveal that a new Bi-I phase is formed at high pressure. The possibility that the topological insulator state could coexist with superconductivity in beta-Bi4I4 is certainly a fascinating option but it remains for now an open question.

EPFL2016

Single crystals of superconducting SmFeAsOHx: Structure and properties

Alla Arakcheeva, László Forró, Richard Gaal, Ping Huang, Janusz Andrzej Karpinski, Sergiy Katrych, Péter Krisztián Matus, Andrea Pisoni

We report the synthesis, structure, and superconducting properties of single crystals of SmFeAsOHx. The crystals were grown at high pressure and high temperature using a cubic anvil technique. H-1-NMR studies confirm the presence of H atoms in the samples. Single crystal x-ray diffraction analyses demonstrate a remarkable disorder in the Sm2O2 layers induced by hydrogen incorporation and reveal that the H positions are compatible with a H2O-like geometry inside the crystals. We have measured the magnetotransport properties of SmFeAsOHx single crystals with x = 0.07, 0.11, and 0.16 in magnetic field up to 16 T, oriented along the two main crystallographic directions. The results show an increase of the critical temperature with hydrogen content. The zero-temperature upper critical fields and the magnetic anisotropy are calculated as a function of the hydrogen content. SmFeAsOHx crystals present significantly higher upper critical fields and magnetic anisotropies compared to SmFeAsO1-x F-x compounds.

Amer Physical Soc2016

Pressure-tuned Transport Properties of Novel Iron-based Superconductors and Topological Insulators

Andrea Pisoni

EPFL2016