Influence of Self-irradiation Damages on the Superconducting Behaviour of Plutonium -based Compounds

External irradiation of materials creates defects and induces lattice disorders. Interestingly, defects are sometimes helpful for technological purposes. Hence, controlled defect creation has drawn prime attention, in particular on superconductors (especially A15 phases and high temperature superconductors), to make them economically viable by improving their critical current density (irradiation-induced defects act as pinning centres for vortices, which are quantized magnetic fluxes entering the material)1. In this context, the discovery of PuCoGa5 2 and PuRhGa5 3 superconductors is very interesting: first, they represent two new cases of non-conventional superconductors4,5 and second, they provide unique cases to study the impact of self-radiation damage (due to the α-decay of the Pu atoms) on the superconducting critical parameters. In this work, we report about ageing effects in 239PuCo1-xRhxGa5 solid solutions to improve our understanding of the interactions between defects and vortices, without performing any extra irradiation experiment. The evolution with time of the critical parameters (Tc, Hc2, Jc) has been followed by SQUID magnetometry and electrical resistivity measurements.

JUTIER Frederic;  GRIVEAU Jean-Christophe;  COLINEAU Eric;  REBIZANT Jean;  BOULET Pascal;  WASTIN Franck;  SIMONI E.; 

2005-10-11

Royal Society of Chemistry

JRC30436

https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC30436,