Interplay between the glassy transition and granular superconductivity in organic materials

TL;DR

This study investigates how quenched disorder affects superconductivity and glassy transitions in organic materials, revealing percolation cluster growth, relaxation dynamics, and spin-glass-like behavior near 80 K.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the interplay between glassy transitions and superconductivity using a percolation and spin-glass model in organic superconductors.

Findings

Cluster growth follows power law at short times

Relaxation time obeys Arrhenius law with U~2660 K

Magnetization scaling suggests spin-glass behavior

Abstract

It is known that some (BEDT-TTF)2X layered organic superconductors undergo a glassy transition near 80 K. Our purpose is to exploit quenched disorder to get new insights on both the superconducting state (T < 12 K) and the glassy transition by studying the superconducting properties as functions of annealing time (ta) and temperature (Ta) around 80 K. The main results on the fully deuterated kappa-(BEDT-TTF)2Cu[N(CN)2]Br compound are: 1) The data can be described by a percolation cluster model. 2) At short time scales, the clusters grow with ta following a power law. 3) At large time scales the clusters grow toward a thermodynamic state following a stretched exponential law in (1 - exp(-(t/tau)beta)with beta varying from about 0.5 to 1 in our Ta range (65 - 110 K). 4) The relaxation time follows an Arrhenius law tau(T)=tau0exp(U/T) with U around 2660 K and 1/tau0 around 2x1013 s-1. 5) The asymptotic magnetization fits with a scaling law with Tg around 55K and n around 3.2. The results are consistent with a Ising spin-glass-like model.