Scotch tape induced strains for enhancing superconductivity of FeSe0.5Te0.5 single crystals

作者：Weike Wang, Jun Li, Jiyong Yang, Chuanchuan Gu, Xuliang Chen, Zhitao Zhang, Xuebin Zhu, W. J. Lu, Huabing Wang, Pei-Heng Wu, Zhaorong Yang, Mingliang Tian, Yuheng Zhang, V. V. Moshchalkov · 发表于：Applied Physics Letters · 年份：2014 · DOI：10.1063/1.4903922 · 被引用次数：17 · 研究领域：Iron-based superconductors research、Corporate Taxation and Avoidance、Rare-earth and actinide compounds

We investigated the superconducting transition temperature Tc of FeSe0.5Te0.5 single crystals, which can be enhanced up to 14% by attaching onto a commercial Scotch tape. The Scotch tape exhibits a large cooling shrinkage at low temperatures, which is considerably more pronounced than that of the metallic FeSe0.5Te0.5 single crystal, thus providing a compressive strain of 2.4 × 10−3 at 15 K. For such strain, we calculated that the lattice parameter of c/a can be increased to ∼0.31%, which corresponds to the enhancement of the superconductivity. The present finding provides a rapid and simple method to examine the microstructure sensitive physical properties of the layered-structure materials by using the Scotch tape as strain generator.