Doping effect of Cu and Ni impurities on the Fe-based superconductor Ba0.6K0.4Fe2As2

Abstract

Copper and Nickel impurities have been doped into the iron pnictide superconductor Ba0.6K0.4Fe2As2. Resistivity measurements reveal that Cu and Ni impurities suppress superconducting transition temperature T_c with rates of ΔT_c/Cu-1% = -3.5 K and ΔT_c/Ni-1% = -2.9 K respectively. Temperature dependence of Hall coefficient R_H of these two series of samples show that both Cu-doping and Ni-doping can introduce electrons into Ba0.6K0.4Fe2As2. With more doping, the sign of R_H gradually changes from positive to negative, while the changing rate of Cu-doped samples is much faster than that of Ni-doped ones. Combining with the results of first-principles calculations published previously and the non-monotonic evolution of the Hall coefficient in the low temperature region, we argue that when more Cu impurities were introduced into Ba0.6K0.4Fe2As2, the removal of Fermi spectral weight in the hole-like Fermi surfaces is much stronger than that in the electron-like Fermi surfaces, which is equivalent to significant electron doping effect. DC magnetization and the lattice constants analysis reveal that static magnetic moments and notable lattice compression have been formed in Cu-doped samples. It seems that the superconductivity can be suppressed by the impurities disregard whether they are magnetic or nonmagnetic in nature. This gives strong support to a pairing gap with a sign reversal, like S^\pm. However, the relatively slow suppression rates of T_c show the robustness of superconductivity of Ba0.6K0.4Fe2As2 against impurities, implying that multi-pairing channels may exist in the system.