Utilization of mechanical alloying method for flux growth of single crystalline BaFe$_2$(As$_{1-x}$P$_x$)$_2$

TL;DR

This study introduces a mechanical alloying technique to efficiently prepare precursors for flux growth, enabling rapid synthesis of high-quality BaFe$_2$(As$_{1-x}$P$_x$)$_2$ single crystals with reduced time and improved control.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates a novel application of mechanical alloying for precursor preparation, significantly shortening synthesis time and enabling effective growth of large single crystals.

Findings

Precursor formation completed within one hour at room temperature.

Successful growth of BaFe$_2$(As$_{1-x}$P$_x$)$_2$ single crystals up to 5 mm size.

Mechanical alloying reduces overall synthesis time and improves precursor quality.

Abstract

Mechanical alloying method has been employed to prepare the Ba-Fe-As-P precursors, necessary for the Ba-(As,P) flux growth of the single crystalline BaFe$_2$(As$_{1-x}$P$_x$)$_2$. By alloying constituent elementals mechanically, the Ba-(As,P) precursors are successfully formed at the room temperature within one hour, significantly reducing preparation time. Using the mechanically alloyed precursors, we have grown single crystals of BaFe$_2$(As$_{1-x}$P$_x$)$_2$ with the sizes up to 5~mm $\times$ 5~mm $\times$ 0.1~mm.