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| Author(s): |
Thales Macedo Garitezi
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | Campinas, SP. |
| Institution: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Física Gleb Wataghin |
| Defense date: | 2014-08-14 |
| Examining board members: |
Pascoal José Giglio Pagliuso;
Raimundo Lora Serrano;
Elisa Maria Baggio Saitovitch;
Guillermo Gerardo Cabrera Oyarzún;
Abner de Siervo
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| Advisor: | Ricardo Rodrigues Urbano; Pascoal José Giglio Pagliuso |
| Abstract | |
In this thesis, two main material classes are studied: the iron arsenide (FeAs) superconductors and the three-dimensional topological insulators. The FeAs based superconductors were discovered in 2008 and since then have aroused great interest in the scientific community as possible unconventional high-temperature superconductors. Amongst the many FeAs bases structures that were discovered until now, the BaFe2As2 (122) family is one of the most studied for being an intermetallic compound which can be grown with reasonable ease and high quality when compared to other families. This pure compound presents a structural transition at Ts ? 139 K from tetragonal to orthorhombic, and a magnetic transition at a lower TSDW ? 134 K from paramagnetic (PM) to a spin density wave (SDW) anti-ferromagnetic order. Both transitions at Ts and TSDW are gradually suppressed by either chemical substitution or applied pressure, and, before both are completely suppressed, superconductivity emerges. In this region where superconductivity (SC) is still emerging, there is coexistence and/or competition between SC and SDW order, with the presence of Fe quasi-localized magnetic moments. Those moments may act as efficient pinning centers that are gradually suppressed by applied pressure, producing a magnetic pinning effect that would manifest itself in the critical currents of such samples. To study magnetic pinning effects in the 122 family, samples with different chemical substitutions were grown, and critical current density studies were performed under applied pressure and magnetic fields. While the behavior of critical current densities is dominated by the evolution of critical temperature Tc with pressure, we have found indirect evidences for the presence of magnetic pinning in our samples. Regarding the structural and magnetic transitions, there are evidences that, in the 122 system, there is no effective electronic doping when a chemical substitution is performed but a tuning of the system properties by the geometric configuration of FeAs tetrahedra in the material. Also, there is some debate if in the temperature range between Ts and TSDW the material becomes completely orthorhombic and PM, or if there is coexistence of tetragonal/PM and orthorhombic/SDW phases. In this work, Ba(Fe,M)2As2 (M = Co, Cu) single crystals were grown and their structural and magnetic transitions were investigated by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), X-ray diffraction and specific heat. Our results show that there is no effective electronic doping induced by any of the substitutions, and that it is the geometric configuration of FeAs tetrahedra that tunes the system properties. Also, we have shown that there is coexistence between tetragonal/PM and orthorhombic/SDW phases in these samples. The results confirm our previous observations made in (Ba,K)Fe2As2, which also indicates that our results do not depend on the type, concentration and placement of substituted atoms in the 122 matrix. Topological insulators (TIs) are a new class of condensed matter which was proposed theoretically and experimentally observed in 2006. They are, in a simplified view, materials which are band insulators in the bulk, but possess roubst intrinsic metallic surface states. The exotic properties of those surface states make these materials possible candidates in quantum computing and spintronic applications. Many different materials were proposed as TIs and recently studied, in particular the 23 family ((Bi,Sb)2(Se,Te)3) and the half-Heusler family, which are the focus of this thesis. Yet, there are several aspects of these materials which are not yet fully understood, such as the penetration of the surface states, and their response to magnetic fields and incident radiation. In this work, single crystals of the 23 and half-Heusler families were grown, and were studied by electronic spin resonance (ESR). For YBiPt, we observed an anomalous lineshape behavior, to which we attribute a phonon bottleneck effect and the presence of the surface states. For Bi2Se3, our preliminary results indicate that the surface states have an enhanced exchange interaction with the Gd3+ magnetic probes below 40 K, and that those surface states have a p-orbital character (AU) | |
| FAPESP's process: | 11/12292-0 - Magnetic and Transport Properties Study on New Materials |
| Grantee: | Thales Macedo Garitezi |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate |