Critical temperature and upper critical field of Li$_2$Pd$_{3-x}$Cu$_x$B (x=0.0, 0.1, 0.2)superconductors

Abstract

We studied the effects of substitution of Pd by Cu on the upper critical field of the noncentrosymmetric superconductor Li$_2$Pd$_{3-x}$Cu$_x$B, with x=0.0, 0.1 and 0.2. The upper critical field as a function of temperature was determined by resistance measurements at different magnetic fields. We found that the superconducting transition temperature decreases as the Cu content increases. Moreover, the temperature dependence of the upper critical field is linear in the range of the temperature studied and, at low temperature, is enhanced compared with the prediction of the Werthamer-Helfan-Hohenberg theory. This indicates that the breaking of Cooper pairs by spin orbit scattering and Pauli paramagnetism is negligible, and that the upper critical field enhancement is mainly because the electron-phonon coupling and disorder.