2014, Sieger, M., Hänisch, J., Iida, K., Gaitzsch, U., Rodig, C., Schultz, L., Holzapfel, B., Hühne, R.

YBa2Cu3O7-δ (YBCO) films with a thickness of up to 3 μm containing nano-sized BaHfO3 (BHO) have been grown on Y2O3/Y-stabilized ZrO2/CeO 2 buffered Ni-9at% W tapes by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). Structural characterization by means of X-ray diffraction confirmed that the YBCO layer grew epitaxial. A superconducting transition temperature T c of about 89 K with a transition width of 1 K was determined, decreasing with increasing BHO content. Critical current density in self-field and at 0.3 T increased with increasing dopant level.

2018, Yuan, F., Grinenko, V., Iida, K., Richter, S., Pukenas, A., Skrotzki, W., Sakoda, M., Naito, M., Sala, A., Putti, M., Yamashita, A., Takano, Y., Shi, Z., Nielsch, K., Hühne, R.

Revealing the universal behaviors of iron-based superconductors (FBS) is important to elucidate the microscopic theory of superconductivity. In this work, we investigate the effect of in-plane strain on the slope of the upper critical field H c2 at the superconducting transition temperature T c (i.e. -dH c2/dT) for FeSe0.7Te0.3 thin films. The in-plane strain tunes T c in a broad range, while the composition and disorder are almost unchanged. We show that -dH c2/dT scales linearly with T c, indicating that FeSe0.7Te0.3 follows the same universal behavior as observed for pnictide FBS. The observed behavior is consistent with a multiband superconductivity paired by interband interaction such as sign change s ± superconductivity.

2014, Trommler, S., Hänisch, J., Iida, K., Kurth, F., Schultz, L., Holzapfel, B., Hühne, R.

The preparation of biaxially textured BaFe1.8Co0.2As2 thin films has been optimized on MgO single crystals and transfered to piezoelectric (001) Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)0.72Ti0.28O3 substrates. By utilizing the inverse piezoelectric effect the lattice parameter of these substrates can be controlled applying an electric field, leading to a induction of biaxial strain into the superconducting layer. High electric fields were used to achieve a total strain of up to 0.05% at low temperatures. A sharpening of the resistive transition and a shift of about 0.6 K to higher temperatures was found at a compressive strain of 0.035%.

2017-9-4, Lao, M., Hecher, J., Pahlke, P., Sieger, M., Hühne, R., Eisterer, M.

The manifestation of granularity in the superconducting properties of pulsed laser deposited YBCO films on commercially available metallic templates was investigated by scanning Hall probe microscopy at 5 K and was related to local orientation mapping of the YBCO layer. The YBCO films on stainless steel templates with a textured buffer layer of yttrium stabilized ZrO2 grown by alternating beam assisted deposition have a mean grain size of less than with a sharp texture. This results in a homogeneous trapped field profile and spatial distribution of the current density. On the other hand, YBCO films on biaxially textured NiW substrates show magnetic granularity that persists down to a temperature of 5 K and up to an applied magnetic field of 4 T. The origin of the granular field profile is directly correlated to the microstructural properties of the YBCO layer adopted from the granular NiW substrate which leads to a spatially inhomogeneous current density. Grain-to-grain in-plane tilts lead to grain boundaries that obstruct the current while out-of-plane tilts mainly affect the grain properties, resulting in areas with low . Hence, not all grain boundaries cause detrimental effects on since the orientation of individual NiW grains also contributes to observed inhomogeneity and granularity.

2019, Simmendinger, J., Hanisch, J., Bihler, M., Ionescu, A.M., Weigand, M., Sieger, M., Hühne, R., Rijckaert, H., Van Driessche, I., Schütz, G., Albrecht, J.

We studied the impact of soft ferromagnetic permalloy (Py) on the shielding currents in a strong-pinning superconductor - YBa2Cu3O7-δ with Ba2Y(Nb/Ta)O6 nano-precipitates - by means of scanning transmission x-ray microscopy. Typically and in particular when in the thin film limit, superconductor/ferromagnet (SC/FM) bilayers exhibit isotropic properties of the flux line ensemble at all temperatures. However, in elements with small aspect ratio a significant anisotropy in flux penetration is observed. We explain this effect by local in-plane fields arising from anisotropic magnetic stray fields originated by the ferromagnet. This leads to direction-dependent motion of magnetic vortices inside the SC/FM bilayer. Our results demonstrate that small variations of the magnetic properties can have huge impact on the superconductor.