Superconductivity in high-entropy alloy system containing Th
In the recently published in the journal Scientific Reports 13 (2023) 16317, 1-11 work titled Superconductivity in high-entropy alloy system containing Th, by Piotr Sobota, Rafał Topolnicki, Tomasz Ossowski, Tomasz Pikula, Daniel Gnida, Rafał Idczak and Adam Pikul, the authors describe the discovery and study of the first superconductive high-entropy alloy containing the element thorium.
The work integrates the study of structural and physical properties of the new superconductor with an extensive theoretical description that proved to be essential to the correct interpretation of the outcome. The text of the paper is available at:
In the course of the research it turned out that the material crystallises in two main structures: thorium-deficient regular body-centred (bcc) structure and thorium-rich face-centred (fcc) structure. Moreover, the nature of the transition from the normal state to the superconductive state indicates the presence of more than one phase of the superconductor.
Through observations of SEM micrographs with EDS maps, analysis of XRD diffractograms by Rietveld method and theoretical calculations by KKR-CPA method it was determined that the bcc structure is the main contributor to the superconductivity. The fcc structure does not demonstrate any superconductivity in the studied scope, while the source of the blurred transition to the superconducting state are small structures with disturbed stoichiometry crystallizing at the boundaries between the main structures.
