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. 2024 May 28;17(11):2594.
doi: 10.3390/ma17112594.

Fe(Se,Te) Thin Films Deposited through Pulsed Laser Ablation from Spark Plasma Sintered Targets

Michela Iebole  1   2   3   4 , Valeria Braccini  3   4 , Cristina Bernini  3   4 , Andrea Malagoli  3   4 , Nicola Manca  3   4 , Alberto Martinelli  3 , Matteo Cialone  2   3 , Marina Putti  2   3 , Shiv J Singh  5 , Giovanna Latronico  1   6 , Paolo Mele  1
Affiliations

Fe(Se,Te) Thin Films Deposited through Pulsed Laser Ablation from Spark Plasma Sintered Targets

Michela Iebole et al. Materials (Basel). .

Abstract

Iron-based superconductors are under study for their potential for high-field applications due to their excellent superconducting properties such as low structural anisotropy, large upper critical fields and low field dependence of the critical current density. Between them, Fe(Se,Te) is simple to be synthesized and can be fabricated as a coated conductor through laser ablation on simple metallic templates. In order to make all the steps simple and fast, we have applied the spark plasma sintering technique to synthesize bulk Fe(Se,Te) to obtain quite dense polycrystals in a very short time. The resulting polycrystals are very well connected and show excellent superconducting properties, with a critical temperature onset of about 16 K. In addition, when used as targets for pulsed laser ablation, good thin films are obtained with a critical current density above 105 A cm-2 up to 16 T.

Keywords: critical current density; iron-based superconductors; pulsed laser ablation; spark plasma synthesis; thin films.

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Conflict of interest statement

Authors Michela Iebole, Valeria Braccini, Cristina Bernini, Andrea Malagoli and Nicola Manca were employed by the company RAISE Ecosystem. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Secondary electron image of the fractured pellet prepared by SPS.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(a) Back-scattered SEM image, (b) layered image and (c) elemental maps of the pellet prepared by SPS performed using EDS.
Figure 3
Figure 3
XRD pattern of the SPS pellet. The diamonds indicate the peaks of the anti-PbO-type phase and the circles indicate those of the NiAs-type phase. Non-indexed peaks do not belong to the sample but come from the sample holder. An asymmetry of the peaks of the anti-PbO-type phase is observed, indicating the coexistence of two phases: one rich in tellurium and one rich in selenium.
Figure 4
Figure 4
(a) Temperature dependence of ZFC and FC magnetic susceptibility in an applied field of 1 mT for the SPS target. (b) Resistivity curve as a function of the temperature for the SPS target.
Figure 5
Figure 5
θ-2θ XRD scan of the Fe(Se,Te) thin film. (00l) peaks coming from the CaF2 substrate are present together with the (00l) peaks of the Fe(Se,Te) phase.
Figure 6
Figure 6
(a,b) Resistivity as a function of temperature for a thin film up to 16 T applied both perpendicular and parallel to the ab plane. (c) Upper critical field and irreversibility field evaluated as 90% and 10% of the resistivity in the normal state, respectively. (d) Activation energy U0 versus the applied magnetic field as calculated from the Arrhenius plots.
Figure 7
Figure 7
(a,b) Critical current densities up to 16 T with the field perpendicular (2, 5, 8 and 10K) and parallel (5, 8 and 10 K) to the ab plane. (c,d) Normalized pinning force perpendicular and parallel to the film surface, respectively.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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