Scotch tape induced strains for enhancing superconductivity of FeSe0.5Te0.5 single crystals.

We investigated the superconducting transition temperature Tc of FeSe0.5Te0.5 single crystals, which can be enhanced up to 14% by attaching onto a commercial Scotch tape. The Scotch tape exhibits a large cooling shrinkage at low temperatures, which is considerably more pronounced than that of the metallic FeSe0.5Te0.5 single crystal, thus providing a compressive strain of 2.4 x 10-3 at 15 K. For such strain, we calculated that the lattice parameter of c/a can be increased to ~0.31%, which corresponds to the enhancement of the superconductivity. The present finding provides a rapid and simple method to examine the microstructure sensitive physical properties of the layered-structure materials by using the Scotch tape as strain generator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]