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We report the fabrication of ErAl2 magnetocaloric wires by a powder-in-tube (PIT) method and the evaluation of magnetic entropy change through magnetization measurements. The magnetic entropy change of ErAl2 PIT wires exhibits similar behavior to the bulk counterpart, while its magnitude is reduced by the decrease in the volume fraction of ErAl2 due to the surrounding non-magnetic sheaths. We find that another effect reduces the magnetic entropy change of the ErAl2 PIT wires around a ferromagnetic transition temperature, and discuss its possible origin in terms of a correlation between magnetic properties of ErAl2 and mechanical properties of sheath material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Single crystals of La(O,F)BiSSe were grown by using a CsCl flux method. Single crystal X-ray structural analysis reveals that the crystal structure is isostructural to the BiS2- or BiSe2-based compounds crystallizing with space group P4/nmm (lattice parameters a=4.1110(2)Å, c=13.6010(7)Å). However, the S atoms are selectively occupied at the apical site of the Bi-SSe pyramids in the superconducting layer. The single crystals show a superconducting transition at around 4.2K in the magnetic susceptibility and resistivity measurements. The superconducting anisotropic parameter is determined to be 34-35 from its upper critical magnetic field. The anisotropy is in the same range with that of other members of the La(O,F)BiCh2 (Ch=S, Se) family under ambient pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We demonstrated a pressure-induced phase transition from a low-Tc phase (3.5 K) to a high-Tc phase (8.7 K) in single crystalline PrO0.5F0.5BiS2. The high-Tc phase is easily observed even at 0.7 GPa by uniaxial pressure obtained from a geometric effect of a single crystal with an extremely thin thickness. For this phase transition, superconducting anisotropy and the coherence length along the c axis change from γ = 20 to 9.3 and from ξc = 0.56 to 0.71 nm, respectively. It is suggested that a shrinkage in the c lattice constant by applied uniaxial pressure enhances the three dimensionality in the superconducting state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations are observed in atomically flat hydrogen-terminated diamond surfaces with high-density hole carriers introduced by the electric field effect using an ionic liquid. The Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations depend only on the magnetic field component perpendicular to the diamond surface, thus providing evidence of two-dimensional Fermi surfaces. The effective masses estimated from the temperature dependence of the oscillations are close to the cyclotron effective masses of the valence band maxima in diamond. The estimated quantum scattering time is one order of magnitude longer than the transport scattering time and indicates that the carrier mobility is locally as high as several thousand cm2/V s at low temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We prepared single crystalline SmFeAsO1-xFx with an exceptionally high fluorine concentration by using a CsCl flux method. Comparing to conventional flux methods, this method can introduce about double the amount of fluorine into the oxygen site. The obtained single crystal shows the highest superconducting transition temperature (Tc = 57.5 K) in single crystalline iron pnictides. In addition, the residual resistivity ratio is almost three times as large as that of previously reported single crystals. This suggests that our single crystals are suitable for investigation of the intrinsic superconducting properties, since they have few defects and impurities. Using both the Werthamer-Helfand-Hohenberg model and the effective mass model, we demonstrated that a higher fluorine concentration suppresses the anisotropic superconductivity of SmFeAsO1-xFx [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of uniaxial strain and hydrostatic pressure on Hg0.83Re0.18Ba2Ca2.4Cu3.6O14[Hg0.83(Re0.18)-1223] were investigated by ac magnetic measurements under stress corresponding to a pressure of 20 GPa at maximum. According to a previous thermal study based on the Ehrenfest relation, in-plane contraction should increase the superconducting transition temperature Tc, whereas out-of-plane contraction should decrease Tc. This suggests that the increase in Tc under hydrostatic-pressure contraction must be smaller than that under in-plane contraction. However, the present uniaxial-strain experiments revealed enhancement of Tc under both in-plane and out-of-plane contraction, and the largest enhancement was observed under hydrostatic-pressure contraction. According to a band calculation, all contraction styles induce hole doping from the HgO blocks to the CuO2 blocks, and hydrostatic-pressure contraction yields the largest hole doping among three contractions. This behavior explains well a series of changes in Tc in the stress region of below 8 GPa. More specifically, under hydrostatic-pressure contraction, Tc exhibited an increase, a decrease, and another increase with increasing pressure, and this multistep change is similar to that observed in Bi-2223-type cuprate superconductors, suggesting that it is necessary to distinguish the effect of strain on the middle CuO2 plane in the three-CuO2-plane package from that on the outer planes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report magnetoresistance measurements of hydrogen-terminated (100)-oriented diamond surfaces wherein an ionic-liquid-gated field-effect-transistor technique was used to make hole carriers accumulate. Unexpectedly, the observed magnetoresistance is positive within the range of 2