Enhancement of Magnetic and Transport Properties of Superconducting Fe1−xMnxSe0.5Te0.5 Single Crystals

Abstract

In this article, we provide the synthesis and characterization of manganese-substituted FeSe0.5Te0.5 single crystals in the nominal composition range of Fe1−xMnxSe0.5Te0.5 (x = 0.01, 0.05, 0.1) via the self-flux method. It is observed that Mn-substitution improved the bulk superconducting properties of FeSe0.5Te0.5 considerably by increasing the superconducting transition temperatures determined from both resistive and magnetic transitions. Our results reveal that x = 0.05 Mn-substituted sample yields the most appropriate superconducting performance, considering all the samples employed. The corresponding $$ T_{\text{c}}^{\text{onset}} $$ , $$ T_{\text{c}}^{\text{zero}} $$ , and $$ T_{\text{c}}^{\text{mag}} $$ values are obtained to be 15.5 K, 13.7 K, and 14.5 K respectively, which display a clear improvement compared to the reported values in the literature. The $$ J_{c}^{\text{mag}} $$ value of the samples is calculated using DC magnetization data. The best $$ J_{c}^{\text{mag}} $$ value is computed to be 4.7 × 104 A/cm2 for x = 0.05 sample at 8 K under 0.2 kOe, and it decreases to the values 2.54 × 104 A/cm2 and 1.34 × 104 A/cm2 for the x = 0.01 and x = 0.1 samples, respectively.