Superconductivity in TiZrNb and TiZrNbHf bulk equimolar alloys

Abstract

We have prepared and investigated superconducting equimolar medium-entropy alloys of TiZrNb and TiZrNbHf. Their basic superconducting parameters, as the values of the critical temperature Tc, upper critical magnetic field Bc2 and the superconducting energy gap Δ have been studied with the use of magnetic susceptibility and point-contact Andreev reflection (PCAR) spectroscopy measurements. Although our samples have different critical temperatures, namely Tc ∼ 8.2 K for TiZrNb and Tc ∼ 6.3 K for TiZrNbHf, their zero-temperature critical magnetic field has the same value Bc2(0) = 12 T, from the vicinity of the Clogston limit. We have observed the presence of degraded phases on the surfaces of all the investigated samples using PCAR measurements. Still, we were able to show that the bulk phase in both systems exhibits BCS weakly coupled superconductivity with 2Δ(0)/kBTc ∼ 3.5.