Significant improvements of the high-field properties of carbon-doped MgB2 films by hot-filament-assisted hybrid physical-chemical vapor deposition using methane as the doping source

We report a significant enhancement in upper critical field Hc2 and irreversibility field Hirr in carbon-doped MgB2 films fabricated by hot-filament-assisted hybrid physical-chemical vapor deposition (HFA-HPCVD) using methane as the doping source. For the parallel field, a very large temperature derivative -dHc2parallelab/dT value of 3 T K-1 near Tc was achieved in a heavily doped film with Tc near 28 K. Carbon doping also enhanced flux pinning, resulting in a much higher critical current density in a magnetic field Jc(H) than in undoped samples. The result suggests a more effective doping of carbon into the MgB2 structure and a better connectivity between the carbon-doped MgB2 grains than in previous reports. A clear correlation between the decrease in grain size and the enhancement of Hc2 was observed. (rapid communication)