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Superconductivity of MoBe22 and WBe22 at ambient- and under applied-pressure conditions

T. Shiroka1,2,*, T. Shang3,†, M. Juckel4, M. Krnel4, M. König4, U. Burkhardt4, P. Koželj4,‡, R. Gupta1, Yu. Prots4 et al.

E. Svanidze4,§

  • 1Laboratory for Muon-Spin Spectroscopy, Paul Scherrer Institut, Villigen PSI, Switzerland
  • 2Laboratorium für Festkörperphysik, ETH Zürich, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland
  • 3Key Laboratory of Polar Materials and Devices (MOE), School of Physics and Electronic Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China
  • 4Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, D-01187 Dresden, Germany

  • *Corresponding author: tshiroka@phys.ethz.ch
  • †Corresponding author: tshang@phy.ecnu.edu.cn
  • ‡Present address: Jožef Stefan Institute and Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.
  • §Corresponding author: svanidze@cpfs.mpg.de

Phys. Rev. Materials 6, 064804 – Published 27 June, 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.6.064804

Abstract

MoBe22 and WBe22 compounds belong to the binary XBe22 (X=4d or 5d metal) family of superconductors, whose critical temperature depends strongly on X. Despite the multiphase nature of these samples, it is possible to investigate the superconducting properties of MoBe22 and WBe22 at the macro- and microscopic level. A concurrent analysis by means of magnetization and heat-capacity measurements, as well as muon-spin spectroscopy (μSR) was implemented. At ambient pressure, both compounds enter the superconducting state below 2.6±0.1 K (MoBe22) and 4.1±0.10 K (WBe22) and show modest upper critical fields [(μ0Hc2(0)=48±1 mT and μ0Hc2(0)=58±1 mT, respectively]. In WBe22, the temperature-dependent superfluid density suggests a fully gapped superconducting state, well-described by an s-wave model with a single energy gap. Heat-capacity data confirm that such a model applies to both compounds. Finally, ac magnetic susceptibility measurements under applied pressures up to 2.1 GPa reveal a linear suppression of the superconducting temperature, typical of conventional superconducting compounds.

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