Quaternary borocarbides

Soon after the discovery of the quaternary borocarbide superconductors in 1994 a remarkable progress in the investigation of their physical properties could be asserted (Muller and Narozhnyi, 2001b). One reason for this rapid progress is the favorable synthesis properties of this class of materials, which resulted in high-quality polycrystalline samples over a wide range of compositions, as well as thin... 

After a short report on the discovery of the quaternary borocarbide superconductors in Section 1.1, for comparison a limited survey of other superconductors based on boron and/or carbon will be presented in Section 1.2 whereas the interplay of superconductivity and magnetism in other materials is discussed in Section 1.3. At the end of this section some special features of the RNi2B2C compounds and review articles in this field can be found in Section 1.4 as well as the further outline of this chapter. 

Superconductivity in the multiphase quaternary borocarbide system Y-Ni-B-C has been recently reported [141,142], Earlier work on valence fluctuations in ternary borides RENiaB were studied and in the case of YNi4B, a weak but reproducible signal of superconductivity at Tc of 12 K was observed. This is the first report or discovery of a ternary superconducting phase of the elements Y, Ni and B with a high Tc value (Fig. 12.27). 

Quaternary borocarbides, RENi2B2C have rather high Tc and 7n values as is evident from the data given in Table 12.28. 

With the discovery of superconductivity (Tc = 15.5 K) in the Y-Ni-B-C system [6, 80], a new class of quaternary borocarbide superconductors has emerged. Superconductivity has been observed in several rare earth (Lu, Tm, Er and Ho) nickel borocarbides[80], and with transition metals such as Pd and Pt. The superconducting phase having the composition of YNi2B2C, crystallizes [81] in a tetragonal structure with alternating Y-C and Ni2B2 layers. Band structure calculations [82] indicate that these materials, unlike cuprate superconductors, are three-dimensional metals. 

Complex carbides containing boron, occurring frequently in boron-alloyed steels and superalloys, are also named carboborides. Metal borocarbides (see Table 1) are synthesized by powder metallurgical methods or are extracted from a metal matrix. There are pseudoternary or -quaternary borocarbides, such as Mn23(B, C) or (Cr, Mn, Fe)23 (B, C)g (t phases) although boron-carbon substitution in borocarbides is less pronounced than nitrogen-carbon substitution in metal carbonitrides. 

The recently synthesized rare-earth quaternary borocarbides such as RM2B2C (R=rare earth, M=transition metal) have stimulated much interest because of interactions between their magnetic and superconducting (SC) properties. For example, superconductivity coexists with magnestism over a limited temperature range in the Dy, Ho, Er, and Tm... 

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