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We compared the grain and grain boundary (GB) nanostructures in two Ba122 tapes with similarly high J _c . The Ag-sheathed tape made by hot pressing has larger, more plate-like grains with better c -axis alignment but has more GBs blocked by FeAs and Ba–O. In contrast, the tape made by cold pressing with an Ag-Sn/stainless steel sheath possesses fewer plate-like grains and weaker grain alignment but has more continuous current paths with clean physically well-connected GBs. Our nanostructural comparison emphasizes the strong need to achieve both good grain alignment and clean GBs for further J _c improvement of Ba122 tapes.

Abstract A quantum critical point (QCP) is currently being conjectured for the BaFe2(As1−x P x )2 system at the critical value x c ≈ 0.3. In the proximity of a QCP, all thermodynamic and transport properties are expected to scale with a single characteristic energy, given by the quantum fluctuations. Such a universal behavior has not, however, been found in the superconducting upper critical field H c2. Here we report H c2 data for epitaxial thin films extracted from the electrical resistance measured in very high magnetic fields up to 67 Tesla. Using a multi-band analysis we find that H c2 is sensitive to the QCP, implying a significant charge carrier effective mass enhancement at the doping-induced QCP that is essentially band-dependent. Our results point to two qualitatively different groups of electrons in BaFe2(As1−x P x )2. The first one (possibly associated to hot spots or whole Fermi sheets) has a strong mass enhancement at the QCP, and the second one is insensitive to the QCP. The observed duality could also be present in many other quantum critical systems.

Thin films of Fe-based superconductors (FBS) have been utilized in a plethora of different experiments for a fundamental understanding of the superconductivity in these materials, as well as for understanding and improving the materials with regard to possible applications. The developments and progress in thin film growth of these materials in the past 10 years are reviewed with a focus on the two main deposition techniques used so far for FBS (pulsed laser deposition, and molecular beam epitaxy). Possible choices of substrates or buffer systems are motivated and explained with regard to misfit, thermal expansion, chemical stability, etc. In the second part of this review, investigations on tuning the superconducting properties, especially critical temperature Tc and critical current density Jc, in FBS thin films are reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we investigate the temperature dependence of the upper critical field, dHc2/dT, in an increasingly disordered NdFeAsO0.7F0.3 (NdFeAs(O,F)) single crystal that has been progressively irradiated up to a 5.25 × 1016 cm−2 total α-particle dose. For the H∣∣ab-plane, dHc2/dT does not vary remarkably with irradiation, while for the H∣∣c-axis it increases sharply after the first irradiation of 3.60 × 1015 cm−2 and then more gradually with further irradiation doses. Focusing on the H∣∣c-axis, we develop a phenomenological analysis of the Hc2 slope which allows us to inspect the crossover from the clean to the dirty regime. From the Hc2 slope normalized to the critical temperature and to its clean limit value, we extract the ratio of the coherence length ξBCS to the mean free path and we find that when Tc is reduced by a factor of four from its pristine value, ξBCS/ becomes as large as ∼7 and reaches values of ∼1.8 nm, indicating that NdFeAs(O,F) is well into the dirty regime. Our analysis of the Hc2 slope also allows us to compare the pair-breaking effectiveness of scattering in different superconductors, showing similarity between unconventional NdFeAs(O,F) and moderate-Tc phonon-mediated devices, such as MgB2 and A15 compounds, but much a stronger difference with YBa2Cu3O7-δ. This work thus shows that dHc2/dT is a reliable parameter, providing an alternative to residual resistivity, for investigating the pair-breaking mechanism induced by impurity scattering in superconductors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of α-particle irradiation on a NdFeAs(O,F) thin film has been investigated to determine how the introduction of defects affects basic superconducting properties, including the critical temperature Tc and the upper critical field Hc2, and properties more of interest for applications, like the critical current density Jc and the related pinning landscape. The irradiation-induced suppression of the film Tc is significantly smaller than on a similarly damaged single crystal. Moreover Hc2 behaves differently, depending on the field orientation: for H//c the Hc2 slope monotonically increases with increasing disorder, whereas for H//ab it remains constant at low dose and it increases only when the sample is highly disordered. This suggests that a much higher damage level is necessary to drive the NdFeAs(O,F) thin film into the dirty limit. Despite the increase in the low temperature Hc2, the effects on the Jc(H//c) performances are moderate in the measured temperature and field ranges, with a shifting of the pinning force maximum from 4.5 to 6 T after an irradiation of 2 × 1015 cm−2. On the contrary, Jc(H//ab) is always suppressed. The analysis demonstrates that irradiation does introduce point defects (PD) acting as pinning centres proportionally to the irradiation fluence but also suppresses the effectiveness of c-axis correlated pinning present in the pristine sample. We estimate that significant performance improvements may be possible at high field or at temperatures below 10 K. The suppression of the Jc(H//ab) performance is not related to a decrease of the Jc anisotropy as found in other superconductors. Instead it is due to the presence of PD that decrease the efficiency of the ab-plane intrinsic pinning typical of materials with a layered structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on the development of multifilamentary Nb3Sn superconductors by a versatile powder-in-tube technique (PIT) that demonstrates a simple pathway to a strand with a higher density of flux-pinning sites that has the potential to increase critical current density beyond present levels. The approach uses internal oxidation of Zr-alloyed Nb tubes to produce Zr oxide particles within the Nb3Sn layer that act as a dispersion of artificial pinning centres (APCs). In this design, SnO2 powder is mixed with Cu5Sn4 powder within the PIT core that supplies the Sn for the A15 reaction with Nb1Zr filament tubes. Initial results show an average grain size of ∼38 nm in the A15 layer, compared to the 90–130 nm of typical APC-free high-Jc strands made by conventional PIT or Internal Sn processing. There is a shift in the peak of the pinning force curve from H/Hirr of ∼0.2 to ∼0.3 and the pinning force curves can be deconvoluted into grain boundary and point-pinning components, the point-pinning contribution dominating for the APC Nb-1wt%Zr strands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PIT and RRP® Nb3Sn strands are being developed for high field accelerator magnet upgrades for the high luminosity LHC. Here we report a quantitative study of the shape and position of PIT filaments and RRP® sub-elements after rolling lengths of unreacted PIT and RRP® round wires to simulate cabling deformation. In the as-drawn condition, filament shape distortion occurs preferentially in the outer ring filaments. By contrast, rolling induces non-uniform shear bands that generate greater distortion of inner ring filaments. By making a full digitization of the shapes of all filaments, we find that a critical distortion occurs for thickness reductions between 10% and 20% when filament shapes in inner filament rings heavily degrade, especially in the vicinity of the strong 45° shear bands imposed by the rolling. It is well known that maintaining diffusion barrier integrity is vital to retaining adequate RRR in the stabilizing copper needed for magnet stability. Diffusion barrier breaks occur preferentially in these distorted inner filaments and drive local Sn leakage during reaction, increasing RRR degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The grain boundaries (GBs) of high-temperature superconductors (HTSs) intrinsically limit the maximum achievable inter-grain current density (), when the misalignment between the crystallographic axes of adjacent grains exceeds a certain value. A prominent effect resulting from large-angle GBs is a hysteresis of between the increasing and decreasing field branches. Here, we investigate this feature for K- and Co-doped Ba-122 polycrystalline bulks with systematically varied grain size and find that the widely accepted explanation for this effect—the return field of the grains—fails. We use large-area scanning Hall-probe microscopy to distinguish from the intra-granular current density () in order to clarify their interactions. Measurements on Ba-122 bulks reveal that a large results from a small as well as small grains. An extended version of the model proposed by Svistunov and D’yachenko is successfully applied to quantitatively evaluate this behavior. The excellent agreement between the model and experiments suggests that the GBs limit the macroscopic current in all of the samples and that the inter-grain coupling is governed by Josephson tunneling. The predictions of the model are promising in view of realizing high-field HTS magnets. Our main result is that the field dependence of the of an untextured wire can be significantly reduced by reducing the grain size, which results in much higher currents at high magnetic fields. This result is not limited to the investigated iron-based materials and is therefore of interest in the context of other HTS materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A correction to the article "Examination of the trade-off between intrinsic and extrinsic properties in the optimization of a modern internal tin Nb3Sn conductor" which was published in a 2014 issue is presented.

Powder-in-tube (PIT) Nb3Sn wires are competing with Restacked-Rod-Process (RRP®) for the realization of the high luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. These two conductors have different properties and microstructures that are in both cases averages of an inhomogeneous A15 microstructure. PIT has in general a smaller fraction of A15 in the non-Cu cross-section than RRP® and a lower non-Cu Jc (12 T, 4.2 K) (2500–2700 A mm−2 versus 2900–3000 A mm−2) but it can be made in smaller filament diameters, which is an important property for LHC magnets. Another characteristic of PIT A15 is that ∼25% is made up of ∼1–2 μm sized grains (typically ∼10 times the small grain (SG) diameter) and their contribution to transport is uncertain. Here we studied a 192 filament Ta-doped, 1 mm diameter PIT wire and combined multiple characterization techniques in order to distinguish the different wire components, to determine their individual properties and to identify which components are current-carriers. We found multiple evidence that the large A15 grains, which are also the highest-Tc grains, do not contribute to transport at high field and that the only current-carrying A15 is the SG with Tc <17.7 K. However, because of the high density of grain boundaries in the SG A15 layer, PIT has an exceptionally high SG-layer Jc and high specific grain boundary pinning force, QGB. These findings clearly show that it is essential to increase the ratio of small to large and disconnected grains in order to improve PIT performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there has been an increasing effort in improving the performance of Nb 3 Sn for high-field applications, in particular for the fabrication of conductors suitable for the realization of the Future Circular Collider (FCC) at CERN. This challenging task has led to the investigation of new routes to advance the high-field pinning properties, the irreversibility and the upper critical fields (H Irr and H c2 , respectively). The effect of hafnium addition to the standard Nb-4Ta alloy has been recently demonstrated to be particularly promising and, in this paper, we investigate the origins of the observed improvements of the superconducting properties. Electron microscopy, Extended X-ray Absorption Fine Structure Spectroscopy (EXAFS) and Atom Probe Tomography (APT) characterization clearly show that, in presence of oxygen, both fine Nb 3 Sn grains and HfO 2 nanoparticles form. Although EXAFS is unable to detect significant amounts of Hf in the A15 structure, APT does indeed reveal some residual intragrain metallic Hf. To investigate the layer properties in more detail, we created a microbridge from a thin lamella extracted by Focused Ion Beam (FIB) and measured the transport properties of Ta-Hf-doped Nb 3 Sn. H c2 (0) is enhanced to 30.8 T by the introduction of Hf, ~ 1 T higher than those of only Ta-doped Nb 3 Sn, and, even more importantly the position of the pinning force maximum exceeds 6 T, against the typical ~ 4.5-4.7 T of the only Ta-doped material. These results show that the improvements generated by Hf addition can significantly enhance the high-field performance, bringing Nb 3 Sn closer to the requirements necessary for FCC realization., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

The notions of risk and crisis, which shape the management of epidemics, were studied from a social sciences perspective. An angle which provides further reflection on how teams are prepared for epidemics in hospital, by highlighting the construction of trust and uncertainty faced with the risk of infection, notably in the interdependence of the players with the measures and tools designed by experts., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.)

Fe-based superconductors and in particular K-doped BaFe 2 As 2 (K-Ba122) are materials of interest for possible future high-field applications. However the critical current density (J c ) in polycrystalline Ba122 is still quite low and connectivity issues are suspected to be responsible. In this work we investigated the properties of high-purity, carefully processed, K-Ba122 samples synthesized with two separate heat treatments at various temperatures between 600 and 825 °C. We performed specific heat characterization and T c -distribution analysis up to 16 T and we compared them with magnetic T c and J c characterizations, and transmission-electron-microscopy (TEM) microstructures. We found no direct correlation between the magnetic T c and J c , whereas the specific heat T c -distributions did provide valuable insights. In fact the best J c -performing sample, heat treated first at 750 °C and then at 600 °C, has the peak of the T c -distributions at the highest temperatures and the least field sensitivity, thus maximizing H c2 . We also observed that the magnetic T c onset was always significantly lower than the specific heat T c : although we partially ascribe the lower magnetization T c to the small grain size (< λ, the penetration depth) of the K-Ba122 phase, this behaviour also implies the presence of some grain-boundary barriers to current flow. Comparing the T c -distribution with J c , our systematic synthesis study reveals that increasing the first heat treatment above 750 °C or the second one above 600 °C significantly compromises the connectivity and suppresses the vortex pinning properties. We conclude that high-purity precursors and clean processing are not yet enough to overcome all J c limitations. However, our study suggests that a higher temperature T c -distribution, a larger H c2 and a better connectivity could be achieved by lowering the second heat treatment temperature below 600 °C thus enhancing, as a consequence, J c .

Background: Automated radio-frequency identification (RFID)-based hand-hygiene monitoring technology was implemented in an infectious disease department to study healthcare workers' (HCWs') practices and to improve hand hygiene., Aim: To assess HCWs' attitudes towards this innovative monitoring device in order to anticipate resistance to change and facilitate future implementation., Methods: In-depth interviews and an ethnographic approach., Findings: From the perspective of HCWs, while they recognize the usefulness of RFID technology to prevent the transmission of infections to patients, they expressed concerns about risks related to RFID electromagnetic waves, as well as control by their superiors. Overall, HCWs' opinions oscillated between positive feelings characterized by enthusiasm for the possibility of changing their practices using technologies and research, and negative feelings marked by strong criticisms of these technologies and research. These criticisms included blaming hand-hygiene monitoring technology for decontextualizing HCWs' practices. They perceived the technologies through the prism of the local and national contexts in which they are embedded. From their point of view, technologies are primarily in the best interests of the project team. Thus, they affirm and maintain the different interests and objectives between themselves and the project team, crystallizing a conflict of professional norms and values between these two groups. The forms of resistance taken by HCWs were practical as well as oral., Conclusion: Innovative technologies should be developed to address HCWs' attitudes surrounding RFIDs. It is crucial to inform HCWs about the nature of these technologies, although some criticisms about monitoring systems are based on more structural causes., (Copyright © 2019 The Healthcare Infection Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Fe-based superconductors present a large variety of compounds whose physical properties strongly depend on the crystal structure and chemical composition. Among them, the so-called 1111 compounds show the highest critical temperature T c in the bulk form. Here we demonstrate the realization of excellent superconducting properties in NdFeAs(O 1- x F x ). We systematically investigated the correlation between the microstructure at the nanoscale and superconductivity in an epitaxial 22 nm NdFeAs(O 1- x F x ) thin film on a MgO single crystalline substrate ( T c = 44.7 K). Atomic resolution analysis of the microstructure by transmission electron microscopy and atom probe tomography identified several defects and other inhomogeneities at the nanoscale that can act as extrinsic pinning centers. X-Ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy displayed a broad variation of the a -axis lattice parameter either due to a partially strained layer at the interface to the substrate, high local strain at dislocation arrays, mosaicity, or due to composition variation within the film. The electrical transport properties are substantially affected by intrinsic pinning and a matching field corresponding to the film thickness and associated with the Bean-Livingston surface barrier of the surfaces. The thin film showed a self-field critical current density J c (4.2 K) of ∼7.6 MA cm -2 and a record pinning force density of F p ≈ 1 TN m -3 near 35 T for H ‖ ab at 4.2 K. These investigations highlight the role of the microstructure in fine-tuning and possibly functionalizing the superconductivity of Fe-based superconductors., Competing Interests: There are no conflicts to declare., (This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.)

To meet critical current density, J c , targets for the Future Circular Collider (FCC), the planned replacement for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the high field performance of Nb 3 Sn must be improved, but champion J c values have remained static for the last 10 years. Making the A15 phase stoichiometric and enhancing the upper critical field H c2 by Ti or Ta dopants are the standard strategies for enhancing high field performance but detailed recent studies show that even the best modern wires have broad composition ranges. To assess whether further improvement might be possible, we employed Extended X-ray Absorption Fine Structure (EXAFS) to determine the lattice site location of dopants in modern high-performance Nb 3 Sn strands with J c values amongst the best so far achieved. Although Ti and Ta primarily occupy the Nb sites in the A15 structure, we also find significant Ta occupancy on the Sn site. These findings indicate that the best performing Ti-doped stand is strongly sub-stoichiometric in Sn and that antisite disorder likely explains its high average H c2 behavior. These new results suggest an important role for dopant and antisite disorder in minimizing superconducting property distributions and maximizing high field J c properties.

Background: We used videorecordings of routine care to analyze health care providers' deviance from protocols and organized follow-up interviews that were conducted by an anthropologist and a nurse., Methods: After consent, health care workers were recorded during routine care by an automatic video remote control. Each participant was invited to watch her or his recorded behaviors on 2 different videos showing routine practices and her or his deviance from protocols, and to comment on them. After this step an in-depth interview based on preestablished guidelines was organized and explanations regarding the observed deviance was discussed. This design was intended to reveal the HCWs' subjectivity; that is, how they perceive hand hygiene issues in their daily routine, what concrete difficulties they face, and how they try to resolve them., Results: We selected 43 of 250 videorecordings created during the study, which allowed us to study 15 out of 20 health care professionals. Twenty out of 43 videos showed 1 or more breaches in the hand hygiene protocol. The breaches were frequently linked to glove abuse. Deviance from protocols was explained by the health care workers as the result of an adaptive behavior; that is, facing work constraints that were disconnected from infection control protocols. Professional practices and protocols should be revisited to create simple messages that are adapted to the mandatory needs in a real life clinic environment., (Copyright © 2017 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

High temperature (high-T c ) superconductors like cuprates have superior critical current properties in magnetic fields over other superconductors. However, superconducting wires for high-field-magnet applications are still dominated by low-T c Nb 3 Sn due probably to cost and processing issues. The recent discovery of a second class of high-T c materials, Fe-based superconductors, may provide another option for high-field-magnet wires. In particular, AEFe 2 As 2 (AE: Alkali earth elements, AE-122) is one of the best candidates for high-field-magnet applications because of its high upper critical field, H c2 , moderate H c2 anisotropy, and intermediate T c . Here we report on in-field transport properties of P-doped BaFe 2 As 2 (Ba-122) thin films grown on technical substrates by pulsed laser deposition. The P-doped Ba-122 coated conductor exceeds a transport J c of 10 5  A/cm 2 at 15 T for main crystallographic directions of the applied field, which is favourable for practical applications. Our P-doped Ba-122 coated conductors show a superior in-field J c over MgB 2 and NbTi, and a comparable level to Nb 3 Sn above 20 T. By analysing the E - J curves for determining J c , a non-Ohmic linear differential signature is observed at low field due to flux flow along the grain boundaries. However, grain boundaries work as flux pinning centres as demonstrated by the pinning force analysis.

Fe-based superconductors (FBS) present a large variety of compounds whose properties are affected to different extents by their crystal structures. Amongst them, the REFeAs(O,F) (RE1111, RE being a rare-earth element) is the family with the highest critical temperature T c but also with a large anisotropy and Josephson vortices as demonstrated in the flux-flow regime in Sm1111 (T c  ∼ 55 K). Here we focus on the pinning properties of the lower-T c Nd1111 in the flux-creep regime. We demonstrate that for H//c critical current density J c at high temperatures is dominated by point-defect pinning centres, whereas at low temperatures surface pinning by planar defects parallel to the c-axis and vortex shearing prevail. When the field approaches the ab-planes, two different regimes are observed at low temperatures as a consequence of the transition between 3D Abrikosov and 2D Josephson vortices: one is determined by the formation of a vortex-staircase structure and one by lock-in of vortices parallel to the layers. This is the first study on FBS showing this behaviour in the full temperature, field, and angular range and demonstrating that, despite the lower T c and anisotropy of Nd1111 with respect to Sm1111, this compound is substantially affected by intrinsic pinning generating a strong ab-peak in J c .

In general, the critical current density, Jc, of type II superconductors and its anisotropy with respect to magnetic field orientation is determined by intrinsic and extrinsic properties. The Fe-based superconductors of the '122' family with their moderate electronic anisotropies and high yet accessible critical fields (Hc2 and Hirr) are a good model system to study this interplay. In this paper, we explore the vortex matter of optimally Co-doped BaFe2As2 thin films with extended planar and c-axis correlated defects. The temperature and angular dependence of the upper critical field is well explained by a two-band model in the clean limit. The dirty band scenario, however, cannot be ruled out completely. Above the irreversibility field, the flux motion is thermally activated, where the activation energy U0 is going to zero at the extrapolated zero-kelvin Hirr value. The anisotropy of the critical current density Jc is both influenced by the Hc2 anisotropy (and therefore by multi-band effects) as well as the extended planar and columnar defects present in the sample.

Ba(Fe(1-x)Co(x))(2)As(2) is the most tunable of the Fe-based superconductors (FBS) in terms of acceptance of high densities of self-assembled and artificially introduced pinning centres which are effective in significantly increasing the critical current density, J(c). Moreover, FBS are very sensitive to strain, which induces an important enhancement in critical temperature, T(c), of the material. In this paper we demonstrate that strain induced by the substrate can further improve J(c) of both single and multilayer films by more than that expected simply due to the increase in T(c). The multilayer deposition of Ba(Fe(1-x)Co(x))(2)As(2) on CaF2 increases the pinning force density (F(p) = J(c) × µ0H) by more than 60% compared to a single layer film, reaching a maximum of 84 GN/m(3) at 22.5 T and 4.2 K, the highest value ever reported in any 122 phase.

The recently discovered oxypnictide superconductor SmFeAs(O,F) is the most attractive material among the Fe-based superconductors due to its highest transition temperature of 56 K and potential for high-field performance. In order to exploit this new material for superconducting applications, the knowledge and understanding of its electro-magnetic properties are needed. Recent success in fabricating epitaxial SmFeAs(O,F) thin films opens a great opportunity to explore their transport properties. Here we report on a high critical current density of over 10(5) A/cm(2) at 45 T and 4.2 K for both main field orientations, feature favourable for high-field magnet applications. Additionally, by investigating the pinning properties, we observed a dimensional crossover between the superconducting coherence length and the FeAs interlayer distance at 30-40 K, indicative of a possible intrinsic Josephson junction in SmFeAs(O,F) at low temperatures that can be employed in electronics applications such as a terahertz radiation source and a superconducting Qubit.

The K- and Co-doped BaFe(2)As(2) (Ba-122) superconducting compounds are potentially useful for applications because they have upper critical fields (H(c2)) of well over 50 T, H(c2) anisotropy γ < 2and thin-film critical current densities J(c) exceeding 1 MA cm(-2) (refs 1-4) at 4.2 K. However, thin-film bicrystals of Co-doped Ba-122 clearly exhibit weak link behaviour for [001] tilt misorientations of more than about 5°, suggesting that textured substrates would be needed for applications, as in the cuprates. Here we present a contrary and very much more positive result in which untextured polycrystalline (Ba(0.6)K(0.4))Fe(2)As(2) bulks and round wires with high grain boundary density have transport critical current densities well over 0.1 MA cm(-2) (self-field, 4.2 K), more than 10 times higher than that of any other round untextured ferropnictide wire and 4-5 times higher than the best textured flat wire. The enhanced grain connectivity is ascribed to their much improved phase purity and to the enhanced vortex stiffness of this low-anisotropy compound (γ~1-2) when compared with YBa(2)Cu(3)O(7-x) (γ~5).

Understanding new superconductors requires high-quality epitaxial thin films to explore intrinsic electromagnetic properties and evaluate device applications. So far, superconducting properties of ferropnictide thin films seem compromised by imperfect epitaxial growth and poor connectivity of the superconducting phase. Here we report new template engineering using single-crystal intermediate layers of (001) SrTiO(3) and BaTiO(3) grown on various perovskite substrates that enables genuine epitaxial films of Co-doped BaFe(2)As(2) with a high transition temperature (T(c,rho=0) of 21.5 K, where rho=resistivity), a small transition width (DeltaT(c)=1.3 K), a superior critical current density J(c) of 4.5 MA cm(-2) (4.2 K) and strong c-axis flux pinning. Implementing SrTiO(3) or BaTiO(3) templates to match the alkaline-earth layer in the Ba-122 with the alkaline-earth/oxygen layer in the templates opens new avenues for epitaxial growth of ferropnictides on multifunctional single-crystal substrates. Beyond superconductors, it provides a framework for growing heteroepitaxial intermetallic compounds on various substrates by matching interfacial layers between templates and thin-film overlayers.

We report the effect of alpha-particle irradiation on the reduction of the critical temperature T{c} of a NdFeAs(OF) single crystal. Our data indicate that irradiation defects cause both nonmagnetic and magnetic scattering, resulting in the Kondo-like excess resistance Delta rho(T) proportional to lnT over 2 decades in temperatures above T{c}. The critical density of magnetic irradiation defects which suppresses T{c} is found to be much higher than those for cuprates and multiband BCS superconductors. We suggest that such anomalously weak pair breaking by irradiation defects indicates that magnetic scattering in pnictides is coupled with pairing interactions mediated by spin fluctuations.

We report specific heat measurements on neutron-irradiated MgB2 samples, for which the critical temperature is lowered to 8.7 K, but the superconducting transition remains extremely sharp, indicative of a defect structure extremely homogeneous. Our results evidence the presence of two superconducting gaps in the temperature range above 21 K, while single-gap superconductivity is well established as a bulk property, not associated with local disorder fluctuations, when Tc decreases to 11 K.