Effect of electron count and chemical complexity in the Ta-Nb-Hf-Zr-Ti high-entropy alloy superconductor.
High-entropy alloys are made from random mixtures of principal elements on simple lattices, stabilized by a high mixing entropy. The recently discovered body-centered cubic (BCC) Ta-Nb-Hf-Zr-Ti high-entropy alloy superconductor appears to display properties of both simple crystalline intermetallics and amorphous materials; e.g., it has a well-defined superconducting transition along with an exceptional robustness against disorder. Here we show that the valence electron count dependence of the superconducting transition temperature in the high-entropy alloy falls between those of analogous simple solid solutions and amorphous materials and test the effect of alloy complexity on the superconductivity. We propose high-entropy alloys as excellent intermediate systems for studying superconductivity as it evolves between crystalline and amorphous materials.
Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544; vonrohr@princeton.edu rcava@princeton.edu.
Fabian
F
von Rohr
Faculty of Applied Physics and Mathematics, Gdansk University of Technology, Gdansk 80-233, Poland.
Michał J
MJ
Winiarski
Condensed Matter Physics Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973.
Jing
J
Tao
Faculty of Applied Physics and Mathematics, Gdansk University of Technology, Gdansk 80-233, Poland.
Tomasz
T
Klimczuk
Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544; vonrohr@princeton.edu rcava@princeton.edu.
Robert Joseph
RJ
Cava
disordered metals; high-entropy alloys; superconductivity