Abstract
The effect of disorder induced by neutron irradiation in a nuclear reactor (thermal neutron fluence 1×1019cm−2) on the superconducting transition temperature T c and the upper critical field H c2 of polycrystalline MgB2 samples was investigated. Despite the appreciable radiation-induced distortions (more than ten displacements per atom), the initial crystal structure (C32) was retained. The temperature T c decreased from 38 to 5 K upon irradiation and was practically completely restored after the subsequent annealing at a temperature of 70°C. A weak change in the dH c2/dT derivative upon irradiation is explained by the fact that the irradiated samples are described by the “pure” limit of the theory of disordered superconductors. The suppression of T c upon disordering may be due to the isotropization of the originally anisotropic (or multicomponent) superconducting gap or to a decrease in the density of electronic states at the Fermi level.
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