Published November 11, 2013 | Version v1
Journal article

High-field critical current enhancement by irradiation induced correlated and random defects in (Ba0.6K0.4)Fe2As2

  • 1. Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60607 (United States)
  • 2. Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois 60439 (United States)
  • 3. Department of Physics, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan 49008 (United States)
  • 4. Physics Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois 60439 (United States)
  • 5. National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Department of Physics, Center for Superconducting Physics and Materials, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093 (China)

Description

Mixed pinning landscapes in superconductors are emerging as an effective strategy to achieve high critical currents in high, applied magnetic fields. Here, we use heavy-ion and proton irradiation to create correlated and point defects to explore the vortex pinning behavior of each and combined constituent defects in the iron-based superconductor Ba0.6K0.4Fe2As2 and find that the pinning mechanisms are non-additive. The major effect of p-irradiation in mixed pinning landscapes is the generation of field-independent critical currents in very high fields. At 7 T ‖ c and 5 K, the critical current density exceeds 5 MA/cm2

Additional details

Identifiers

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Applied Physics Letters
Journal Volume
103
Journal Issue
20
Journal Page Range
p. 202601-202601.5
ISSN
0003-6951
CODEN
APPLAB

Optional Information

Notes
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