Anisotropic structural and magnetic properties of the field-aligned superconducting system SmFeAsO1-xFx (x = 0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.25 and 0.3)

Abstract

Anisotropic structural and magnetic properties of the field-aligned superconducting system SmFeAsO1−xFx (x = 0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.25 and 0.3) are reported. Due to the Fe spin-orbital related anisotropic exchange coupling, all the tetragonal microcrystalline powders in epoxy were aligned at room temperature using the field-rotation method where the tetragonal ab-plane is parallel to the magnetic alignment field Ba of 0.9 T and the c-axis parallels to the rotating axis. Anisotropic magnetic properties are studied through low temperature magnetic measurements along the c-axis and paralleled to the ab-plane of aligned samples in both zero-field-cooled (ZFC) and field-cooled (FC) modes. The under-doped compound (x = 0.1) is not superconducting with an antiferromagnetic Néel temperature TN ~ 40 K, while the two optimum-doped compounds (x = 0.2 and 0.25) show high superconducting transition temperatures Tc of 49K and 50K, respectively. The variation of anisotropic structural and magnetic properties for this system are discussed and compared with the previously reported 52 K anisotropic superconductor Sm0.95La0.05FeAsO0.85F0.15.