paper

Absence of superconductivity in topological metal ScInAu

arXiv:2012.06501 · doi:10.1016/j.physc.2021.1353928

Abstract

The Heusler compound ScInAu was previously reported to have a superconducting ground state with a critical temperature of 3.0 K. Recent high throughput calculations have also predicted that the material harbors a topologically non-trivial band structure similar to that reported for beta-PdBi. In an effort to explore the interplay between the superconducting and topological properties properties, electrical resistance, magnetization, and x-ray diffraction measurements were performed on polycrystalline ScInAu. The data reveal that high-quality polycrystalline samples lack the super-conducting transition present samples that have not been annealed. These results indicate the earlier reported superconductivity is non-intrinsic. Several compounds in the Au-In-Sc ternary phase space (ScAu, ScIn, and ScInAu) were explored in an attempt to identify the secondary phase responsible for the non-intrinsic superconductivity. The results suggest that elemental In is responsible for the reported superconductivity in ScInAu.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (1)