Engineering Papers⌕ Search

Engineering topics

Lim, Jinhyuk

Publications and source records attributed to Lim, Jinhyuk.

Pressure-induced metallization and loss of surface magnetism in FeSi

Single-crystalline FeSi samples with a conducting surface state were studied under high pressure and magnetic field by means of electrical resistance measurements to explore how the bulk semiconducting state and the surface state are tuned by the application of pressure. Here, we found that the energy gap associated with the semiconducting bulk phase begins to close abruptly at a critical pressure of ~10 GPa and the bulk material becomes metallic with no obvious sign of any emergent phases or non-Fermi liquid behavior in temperature dependent electrical resistance in the neighborhood of the critical pressure above 3 K. Moreover, the metallic phase appears to remain at near-ambient pressure upon release of the pressure. Interestingly, the hysteresis in the electrical resistance vs magnetic field curve associated with the magnetically ordered conducting surface state decreases with pressure and vanishes at the critical pressure, while the slope of the electrical resistance vs magnetic field curve, which has a negative value for pressure below the critical pressure, decreases in magnitude with pressure and changes sign at the critical pressure. Thus the conducting surface state and the corresponding two-dimensional magnetic order collapse at the critical pressure where the energy gap of the bulk material starts to close abruptly, revealing the connection between the conducting surface state and the semiconducting bulk state in FeSi.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

High critical field superconductivity at ambient pressure in MoB 2 stabilized in the P6/mmm structure via Nb substitution

Recently it was discovered that, under elevated pressures, MoB 2 exhibits superconductivity at a critical temperature T c as high as 32 K. The superconductivity appears to develop following a pressure-induced structural transition from the ambient pressure $\text{R}\bar{3}$⁢m structure to an MgB 2 -like P6/mmm structure. This suggests that remarkably high T c values among diborides are not restricted to MgB 2 as previously appeared to be the case, and that similarly high T c values may occur in other diborides if they can be coerced into the MgB 2 structure. In this paper, we show that density functional theory calculations indicate that phonon free energy stabilizes the P6/mmm structure over the $\text{R}\bar{3}$⁢m at high temperatures across the Nb 1–x ⁢Mo x B 2 series. X-ray diffraction confirms that the synthesized Nb-substituted MoB 2 adopts the MgB 2 crystal structure. Finally, high magnetic field electrical resistivity measurements and specific heat measurements demonstrate that Nb x ⁢Mo 1–x⁢ B 2 exhibits superconductivity with T c as high as 8 K and critical fields approaching 6 T.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

A15 Nb 3 Si: a ‘high’ T c superconductor synthesized at a pressure of one megabar and metastable at ambient conditions

A15 Nb 3 Si is, until now, the only 'high' temperature superconductor produced at high pressure (~110 GPa) that has been successfully brought back to room pressure conditions in a metastable condition. Based on the current great interest in trying to create metastable-at-room-pressure high temperature superconductors produced at high pressure, we have restudied explosively compressed A15 Nb 3 Si and its production from tetragonal Nb 3 Si. First, diamond anvil cell pressure measurements up to 88 GPa were performed on explosively compressed A15 Nb 3 Si material to trace T c as a function of pressure. T c is suppressed to ~5.2 K at 88 GPa. Then, using these T c (P) data for A15 Nb 3 Si, pressures up to 92 GPa were applied at room temperature (which increased to 120 GPa at 5 K) on tetragonal Nb 3 Si. Measurements of the resistivity gave no indication of any A15 structure production, i.e. no indications of the superconductivity characteristic of A15 Nb 3 Si. This is in contrast to the explosive compression (up to P ~ 110 GPa) of tetragonal Nb 3 Si, which produced 50%–70% A15 material, T c = 18 K at ambient pressure, in a 1981 Los Alamos National Laboratory experiment. This implies that the accompanying high temperature (1000 °C) caused by explosive compression is necessary to successfully drive the reaction kinetics of the tetragonal → A15 Nb 3 Si structural transformation. Our theoretical calculations show that A15 Nb 3 Si has an enthalpy vs the tetragonal structure that is 70 meV atom –1 smaller at 100 GPa, while at ambient pressure the tetragonal phase enthalpy is lower than that of the A15 phase by 90 meV atom –1 . Furthermore, the fact that 'annealing' the A15 explosively compressed material at room temperature for 39 years has no effect shows that slow kinetics can stabilize high pressure metastable phases at ambient conditions over long times even for large driving forces of 90 meV atom –1 .

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Remarkable low-energy properties of the pseudogapped semimetal Be 5 Pt

We report measurements and calculations on the properties of the intermetallic compound Be 5 Pt. High-quality polycrystalline samples show a nearly constant temperature dependence of the electrical resistivity over a wide temperature range. On the other hand, relativistic electronic structure calculations indicate the existence of a narrow pseudogap in the density of states arising from accidental approximate Dirac cones extremely close to the Fermi level. A small true gap of order ~ 3 meV is present at the Fermi level, yet the measured resistivity is nearly constant from low to room temperature. We argue that this unexpected behavior can be understood by a cancellation of the energy dependence of density of states and relaxation time due to disorder, and discuss a model for electronic transport. With applied pressure, the resistivity becomes semiconducting, consistent with theoretical calculations that show that the band gap increases with applied pressure. We further discuss the role of Be inclusions in the samples.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Compression behavior of dense H 2 -He mixtures up to 160 GPa

We have studied the compression behavior of H 2 -He mixtures in comparison with pure H 2 and He using powder synchrotron x-ray diffraction and present the pressure-volume (PV) compression data of H 2 -He mixtures to 160 GPa. The results indicate that both H 2 and He in H 2 -He mixtures remain in hcp to the maximum pressure studied, yet develop a substantial level of lattice distortion in the (100) plane, most profound in He-rich solids and below 66 GPa. The measured PV data also indicate softening of He (or H 2 )-rich lattice upon increasing the level of the guest H 2 (or He) concentration. We suggest that the observed softening and lattice distortion are due to a substitutional incorporation of H2 (guest) molecules into the basal plane of hcp-He (host) lattice and, thereby, reflect the miscibility between H 2 and He in H 2 -He mixtures. Interestingly, solid He exhibits a lesser degree of preferred orientation in H2-He mixtures than in pure He, likely due to the presence of solid H 2 disturbing the crystalline ordering of He-rich solids. Finally, the present PV compression data of H 2 -rich and He-rich solids to 160 GPa deviate from those of pure H 2 and pure He above ~70 and 45 GPa respectively, providing new constraints for development of the EOS for H 2 -He mixtures for planetary models.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗