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.

*This work is supported NSF and ONR.

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