Effective pinning barriers of NdFeAsO0.88F0.12 superconductor Original Research Article

Resistivities of polycrystalline iron-based NdFeAsO0.88F0.12 superconductors prepared via solid-state reaction in ambient pressure (AP) and high pressure (HP) were measured in various magnetic fields ranging from 0 to 9 T. Different resistivity broadening behaviors of the AP and HP samples, which may originate from the anisotropic superconductivity, the vortex motion, or the connectivity, were investigated in detail. The effective pinning barriers of both the AP and HP samples were obtained from the Arrhenius plot of the resistivity data by two analytic methods of which one assuming the prefactor 2ρcU/T of the thermally activated flux flow (TAFF) resistivity ρ=(2ρcU/T)exp(−U/T) is a constant, while the other assuming the prefactor is temperature dependent. The results determined from the two methods were compared and analysed, and the true effective pinning barriers were obtained. The origin of different pinning barriers of the AP and HP samples is discussed.