Synthesis and superconductivity in spark plasma sintered pristine and graphene-doped FeSe0.5Te0.5

Abstract

Here, we present a new ball-milling and spark plasma sintering (SPS)-based technique for the facile synthesis of FeSe0.5Te0.5 superconductors without the need for pre-alloying. This method is advantageous since it is quick and flexible for incorporating other dopants such as graphene for vortex pinning. We observed that FeSe0.5Te0.5 exhibits a coexistence of ferromagnetic (FM) and superconductivity signature plausibly arising from a FM core-superconducting shell structure. More importantly, the Hc2 values observed from resistivity data are higher than 7 T, indicating that SPS process synthesized FeSe0.5Te0.5 samples could lead to next-generation superconducting wires and cables.

Keywords

• graphene
• spark plasma sintering
• superconductivity