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Adding impurities or defects destroys crystalline order. Occasionally, however, extraordinary behaviour emerges that cannot be explained by perturbing the ordered state. One example is the Kondo effect, where magnetic impurities in metals drastically alter the temperature dependence of resistivity. In Type-II superconductors, disorder generally works to pin vortices, giving zero resistivity below a critical current j c . However, peaks have been observed in the temperature and field dependences of j c . This peak effect is difficult to explain in terms of an ordered Abrikosov vortex lattice. Here we test the widespread paradigm that an order-disorder transition of the vortex ensemble drives the peak effect. Using neutron scattering to probe the vortex order in superconducting vanadium, we uncover an order-disorder transition from a quasi-long-range-ordered phase to a vortex glass. The peak effect, however, is found to lie at higher fields and temperatures, in a region where thermal fluctuations of individual vortices become significant.

The structure and properties of the ferromagnet Tb(1-x)Dy(x)Fe(2) are explored through the morphotropic phase boundary (MPB) separating ferroic phases of differing symmetry. Our synchrotron data support a first order structural transition, with a broadening MPB width at higher temperatures. The optimal point for magnetomechanical applications is not centered on the MPB but lies on the rhombohedral side, where the high striction of the rhombohedral majority phase combines with the softened anisotropy of the MPB. We compare our findings with single ion crystal field theory and with ferroelectric MPBs, where the controlling energies are different.

We study the structural and magnetic orders in electron-doped BaFe(2-x)Ni(x)As2 by high-resolution synchrotron x-ray and neutron scatterings. Upon Ni doping x, the nearly simultaneous tetragonal-to-orthorhombic structural (T(s)) and antiferromagnetic (T(N)) phase transitions in BaFe2As2 are gradually suppressed and separated, resulting in T(s)>T(N) with increasing x, as was previously observed. However, the temperature separation between T(s) and T(N) decreases with increasing x for x≥0.065, tending toward a quantum bicritical point near optimal superconductivity at x≈0.1. The zero-temperature transition is preempted by the formation of a secondary incommensurate magnetic phase in the region 0.088≲x≲0.104, resulting in a finite value of T(N)≈T(c) + 10  K above the superconducting dome around x≈0.1. Our results imply an avoided quantum critical point, which is expected to strongly influence the properties of both the normal and superconducting states.

Superconductivity in the iron pnictides develops near antiferromagnetism, and the antiferromagnetic (AF) phase appears to overlap with the superconducting phase in some materials such as BaFe(2-x)T(x)As2 (where T=Co or Ni). Here we use neutron scattering to demonstrate that genuine long-range AF order and superconductivity do not coexist in BaFe(2-x)Ni(x)As2 near optimal superconductivity. In addition, we find a first-order-like AF-to-superconductivity phase transition with no evidence for a magnetic quantum critical point. Instead, the data reveal that incommensurate short-range AF order coexists and competes with superconductivity, where the AF spin correlation length is comparable to the superconducting coherence length.

Herein, we report the synthesis of multiscale nanostructured p-type (Bi,Sb)(2)Te(3) bulk materials by melt-spinning single elements of Bi, Sb, and Te followed by a spark plasma sintering process. The samples that were most optimized with the resulting composition (Bi(0.48)Sb(1.52)Te(3)) and specific nanostructures showed an increase of approximately 50% or more in the figure of merit, ZT, over that of the commercial bulk material between 280 and 475 K, making it suitable for commercial applications related to both power generation and refrigeration. The results of high-resolution electron microscopy and small angle and inelastic neutron scattering along with corresponding thermoelectric property measurements corroborate that the 10-20 nm nanocrystalline domains with coherent boundaries are the key constituent that accounts for the resulting exceptionally low lattice thermal conductivity and significant improvement of ZT.

Many prominent phenomena originate from geometrical effects rather than from local physics. For example, the 'hairy ball' (HB) theorem asserts that a hairy sphere cannot be combed without introducing at least one singularity, and is fulfilled by the atmospheric circulation with the existence of stratospheric polar vortices and the fact that there is always at least one place on Earth where the horizontal wind is still. In this study, we examine the consequences of the HB theorem for the lattice of flux lines that form when a magnetic field is applied to a type-II superconducting crystal. We find that discontinuities must exist in lattice shape as a function of field direction relative to the crystal. Extraordinary, 'unconventional' flux line lattice shapes that spontaneously break the underlying crystal symmetry are thus remarkably likely across all type-II superconductors, both conventional and unconventional.