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We investigated the effect of 0.6 MeV proton irradiation on the superconducting and normal-state properties of thin-film YBa2Cu3O7-δ superconductors. A thin-film YBCO superconductor (≈567 nm thick) was subject to a series of proton irradiations with a total fluence of 7.6×1016 p/cm2. Upon irradiation, Tc was drastically decreased from 89.3 K towards zero with a corresponding increase in the normal-state resistivity above Tc. This increase in resistivity, which indicates an increase in defects inside the thin-film sample, can be converted to the dimensionless scattering rate. We found that the relation between Tc and the dimensionless scattering rate obtained during proton irradiation approximates the generalized d-wave Abrikosov-Gor'kov theory better than the previous results obtained from electron irradiations. This is an unexpected result, since the electron irradiation is known to be most effective to suppress superconductivity over other heavier ion irradiations such as proton irradiation. In comparison with the previous irradiation studies, we found that the result can be explained by two facts. First, the dominant defects created by 0.6 MeV protons can be point-like when the implantation depth is much longer than the sample thickness. Second, the presence of defects on all element sites is important to effectively suppress Tc., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Over the past 20 years, advances in tokamak physics and technology have prepared the field of magnetic confinement fusion research for the next step toward a steady-state burning plasma., (© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of China Science Publishing & Media Ltd.)

Solid nitrogen-rich compounds are potential high-energy-density materials (HEDMs). The enormous challenge in this area is to synthesize and stabilize these energetic materials at moderate pressure and better under near-ambient conditions. Here, we perform an extensive theoretical study on hydronitrogens by the reverse design method considering both energies and energy densities. Four hydronitrogens with different stoichiometries, that is, N 4 H, N 3 H, N 2 H, and NH, are found to be stable at pressures of about 80-300 GPa and metastable with pressure releasing to ambient pressure. The energy densities of these hydronitrogens are about 5.6-6.5 kJ/g and 1.3-1.5 times larger than that of trinitrotoluene (TNT). Most importantly, the Pbam phase of the N 4 H compound is an excellent high-temperature superconductor with a T c of 37.7 K at 72 GPa. The present findings enrich new phases of hydronitrogens under high pressure and characterize their structural and energetic properties and superconductivity, which offer crucial insights for further design and synthesis of exceptional materials with high energy density and high-temperature superconductivity.

The physical properties of copper oxide high-temperature superconductors have been studied extensively, such as the band structure and doping effects of Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8+δ (Bi-2212). However, some chemical-related properties of these superconductors are rarely reported, such as their stability in water-bearing environments. Herein, we report experiments combined with ab initio calculations that address the effects of water in contact with Bi-2212. The evolution of Bi-2212 flakes with exposure to water for different time intervals was tested and characterized by optical microscopy (OM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), Raman spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and electrical measurements. The thickness of Bi-2212 flakes is gradually decreased in water, and some thin flakes can be completely etched away after a few days. The stability of Bi-2212 in other solvents is also evaluated, including alcohol, acetone, HCl, and KOH. The morphology of Bi-2212 flakes is relatively stable in organic solvents. However, the flakes are etched relatively quick in HCl and KOH, especially in an acidic environment. Our results imply that hydrogen ions are primarily responsible for the deterioration of their properties. Both TEM and calculation results demonstrate that the atoms in the Bi-O plane are relatively stable when compared to the inner atoms in Sr-O, Ca-O, and Cu-O planes. This work contributes toward understanding the chemical stability of a Bi-2212 superconducting device in environmental medium, which is important for both fundamental studies and practical applications of copper oxide high-temperature superconductors.

Plasmonics, as a rapidly growing research field, provides new pathways to guide and modulate highly confined light in the microwave-to-optical range of frequencies. We demonstrated a plasmonic slot waveguide, at the nanometer scale, based on the high-transition-temperature ( T c ) superconductor Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8+δ (BSCCO), to facilitate the manifestation of chip-scale millimeter wave (mm-wave)-to-terahertz (THz) integrated circuitry operating at cryogenic temperatures. We investigated the effect of geometrical parameters on the modal characteristics of the BSCCO plasmonic slot waveguide between 100 and 800 GHz. In addition, we investigated the thermal sensing of the modal characteristics of the nanoscale superconducting slot waveguide and showed that, at a lower frequency, the fundamental mode of the waveguide had a larger propagation length, a lower effective refractive index, and a strongly localized modal energy. Moreover, we found that our device offered a larger SPP propagation length and higher field confinement than the gold plasmonic waveguides at broad temperature ranges below BSCCO's T c . The proposed device can provide a new route toward realizing cryogenic low-loss photonic integrated circuitry at the nanoscale.

The impact of temperature on the pulsed magnetization of a high-temperature superconductor (HTS) has been numerically studied. The resulting trapped field (TF) and its distribution over the HTS have been calculated for samples with random and periodic pinning (a regular triangular lattice). The increasing ambient temperature (within the considered values) has been shown to improve the field-trapping efficiency and lead to the possibility of pumping more flux into the sample with each consecutive pulse (contrary to the low-temperature case). Various pulse shapes produced different results at high temperatures. Trapezoidal pulses showed the highest efficiency owing to the constant-field segments during which the vortices continued to enter the sample. The critical (activation) field of flux jumps has been shown to decrease with the rising temperature. At the highest considered temperature (30 K), the flux jumps occurred during the TF relaxation. To the best of our knowledge, such calculations have been done for the first time., (© 2021 IOP Publishing Ltd.)

High-temperature superconducting (HTS) bulks can be used in electrical applications. Experimental characterization of large-size HTS bulks is a tricky issue. The relevant parameters for their application were directly measured in this study. This paper has three main aims. Firstly, features of YBaCuO bulks are presented. Secondly, an electrical motor application is developed using magnetic field shielding and trapping. Thirdly, the HTS bulks are characterized. Several classical methods were used, which are mainly magnetic methods only available for small samples. The complete penetration magnetic field and the critical current density were found to be the main parameters relevant for applications. An innovative entire HTS bulk characterization method is presented. This characterization method is useful for end users and engineers to better implement HTS bulks.

We prepared overlap soldered joints of high-temperature superconducting tapes, using various materials and preparation conditions. In order to select the joints with optimal performance, we correlated their electrical properties (derived from current-voltage curves) with the microstructure of the respective joint cross-section by scanning electron microscopy. With the first group of joints, we focused on the effect of used materials on joint resistivity and critical current, and we found that the dominant role was played by the quality of the internal interfaces of the superconducting tape. Initial joint resistivities ranged in the first group from 41 to 341 nΩ·cm 2 . The second group of joints underwent a series of thermal cyclings, upon which the initial resistivity range of 35-49 nΩ·cm 2 broadened to 25-128 nΩ·cm 2 . After the total of 135 thermal cycles, three out of four joints showed no signs of significant degradation. Within the limit of 100 thermal cycles, reliable soldered joints can be thus prepared, with normalized resistivity not exceeding 1.4 and with normalized critical current above the value of 0.85.

We enhanced the performance of superconducting tapes during quenching by coating the tapes with various composites, with regards to the application of such coated systems in superconducting fault current limiters. In composition of the coating, we varied the type of epoxy matrix, the content of ceramic filler particles and the use of reinforcement in order to optimize the thermal and the mechanical stability of the coated tapes. By this way modified superconducting tapes were able to reduce the maximum temperature 170 °C of not modified superconducting tape to 55 °C during the quench with electric field up to 130 V m -1 .

A ferromagnetic barrier thinner than the coherence length in high-temperature superconductors is realized in the multilayers of YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7-δ and La 0.67 Ca 0.33 MnO 3 . We used epitaxial growth of YBCO on ⟨110⟩ SrTiO 3 substrates by pulsed laser deposition to prepare thin superconducting films with copper oxide planes oriented at an angle to the substrate surface. Subsequent deposition of LCMO and finally a second YBCO layer produces a superconductor/ferromagnet/superconductor trilayer containing an ultrathin ferromagnetic barrier with sophisticated geometry at which the long axis of coherence length ovoid of YBCO is pointing across the LCMO ferromagnetic layer. A detailed characterization of this structure is achieved using high-resolution electron microscopy.

In pursuit of the elusive mechanism of high- T C superconductors (HTSC), spectroscopic imaging scanning tunneling microscopy (SI-STM) is an indispensable tool for surveying local properties of HTSC. Since a conventional STM utilizes metal tips, which allow the examination of only quasiparticles and not superconducting (SC) pairs, Josephson tunneling using STM has been demonstrated by many authors in the past. An atomically resolved scanning Josephson tunneling microscopy (SJTM), however, was realized only recently on Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8+ x (Bi-2212) below 50 mK and on the Pb(110) surface at 20 mK. Here we report the atomically resolved SJTM on Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8+ x at 4.2 K using Bi-2212 tips created in situ. The I- V characteristics show clear zero bias conductance peaks following Ambegaokar-Baratoff (AB) theory. A gap map was produced for the first time using an atomically resolved Josephson critical current map I C ( r) and AB theory. Surprisingly, we found that this new gap map is anticorrelated to the gap map produced by a conventional method relying on the coherence peaks. Quasiparticle resonance due to a single isolated zinc atom impurity was also observed by SJTM, indicating that atomically resolved SJTM was achieved at 4.2 K. Our result provides a starting point for realizing SJTM at even higher temperatures, rendering possible investigation of the existence of SC pairs in HTSC above the T C .

One of the key challenges in condensed-matter physics is to establish a topological superconductor that hosts exotic Majorana fermions. Although various heterostructures consisting of conventional BCS (Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer) superconductors as well as doped topological insulators were intensively investigated, no conclusive evidence for Majorana fermions has been provided. This is mainly because of their very low superconducting transition temperatures ( T c ) and small superconducting-gap magnitude. Here, we report a possible realization of topological superconductivity at very high temperatures in a hybrid of Bi(110) ultrathin film and copper oxide superconductor Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8+δ (Bi2212). Using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and scanning tunneling microscopy, we found that three-bilayer-thick Bi(110) on Bi2212 exhibits a proximity-effect-induced s-wave energy gap as large as 7.5 meV which persists up to T c of Bi2212 (85 K). The small Fermi energy and strong spin-orbit coupling of Bi(110), together with the large pairing gap and high T c , make this system a prime candidate for exploring stable Majorana fermions at very high temperatures.

Stability margin of a high-temperature superconducting (HTS) coil is two or three orders of magnitude greater than that of a low-temperature superconducting coil. In recent years, many papers have reported test results of turn-to-turn no-insulation (NI) HTS coils having extremely enhanced thermal stability, such that burnout never occurs in an NI coil, even at an operating current exceeding 2.5 times the critical current. Thus, The main goal of this paper is to clarify transient electromagnetic and thermal behaviors and mechanism of the high thermal stability in an NI REBCO coil. A partial element equivalent circuit (PEEC) model is proposed for the numerical simulation of an NI REBCO coil, which considers a local electrical contact resistance between turns, an I - V characteristic of an REBCO tape, and local self and mutual inductances of the NI REBCO coil. Using the PEEC model, we investigate the influence of the turn-to-turn contact resistance on the transient behavior of the NI REBCO coil during sudden discharging. We also perform thermal conduction analyses with the PEEC model to clarify the transient behavior of an NI REBCO coil during an overcurrent operation.

Recent highly accurate sound velocity measurements reveal a phase transition to a competing phase in YBa2Cu3O6+δ that is not identified in available specific heat measurements. We show that this signature is consistent with the universality class of the loop current-ordered state when the free-energy reduction is similar to the superconducting condensation energy, due to the anomalous fluctuation region of such a transition. We also compare the measured specific heat with some usual types of transitions, which are observed at lower temperatures in some cuprates, and find that the upper limit of the energy reduction due to them is about 1/40th the superconducting condensation energy.