Seokbae Lee

Hidden non-Fermi liquid behavior caused by magnetic phase transition in Ni-doped Ba-122 pnictides.

We studied two BaFe2−xNixAs2 (Ni-doped Ba-122) single crystals at two different doping levels (underdoped and optimally doped) using an optical spectroscopic technique. The underdoped sample shows a magnetic phase transition around 80 K. We analyze the data with a Drude-Lorentz model with two Drude components (D1 and D2). It is known that the narrow D1 component originates from electron carriers in the electron-pockets and the broad D2 mode is from hole carriers in the hole-pockets. While the plasma frequencies of both Drude components and the static scattering rate of the broad D2 component show negligible temperature dependencies, the static scattering rate of the D1 mode shows strong temperature dependence for the both samples. We observed a hidden quasi-linear temperature dependence in the scattering rate of the D1 mode above and below the magnetic transition temperature while in the optimally doped sample the scattering rate shows a more quadratic temperature dependence. The hidden non-Fermi liquid behavior in the underdoped sample seems to be related to the magnetic phase of the material.

Structural, electro-magnetic, and optical properties of Ba(Fe,Ni)2As2 single-crystal thin film

We investigated the superconducting transition temperature (T c), critical current density (J c) and optical properties of optimally doped Ba(Fe0.95Ni0.05)2As2 (Ni-Ba122) single-crystalline epitaxial thin films grown by pulsed laser deposition for the first time. The T c at zero resistivity was about 20.5 K and the J c at self-field and 4.2 K was 2.8 MA cm−2 calculated by the Bean model. The superconducting properties such as T c and J c of thin films are comparable to those of bulk single-crystal samples. The superfluid plasma frequency (λ p,S) of Ni-Ba122 thin film is ~7033 cm−1 obtained by optical spectroscopic technique. Based on this plasma frequency, we obtained the London penetration depth (λ L), ~226 nm at 8 K, which is comparable to those of optimally Co- and K-doped BaFe2As2 single crystals.

Optical properties of graphite oxide and reduced graphite oxide

We studied the optical properties of a graphite oxide and a reduced graphite oxide by using the optical spectroscopic technique. The graphite oxide does not show a finite dc conductivity and has several characteristic absorption modes in the mid-infrared region, caused by an epoxide functional group and hydroxyl and carboxyl moieties in the mid-infrared range. The reduced graphite oxide shows a Drude-like response in the far-infrared region and the estimated dc conductivity and electric mobility are around 200 Ω−1cm−1 and ~100 cm2V−1s−1, respectively. We found that the optical conductivity cannot be fitted with a simple Drude model, which indicates that the charge carriers are correlated. We applied an extended Drude model and obtained the optical scattering rate and the optical effective mass. We found that the optical effective mass can carry information of both the enhanced mass by correlation and the electronic band structure.

Optical properties of NbCl5 and ZnMg intercalated graphite compounds

We studied NbCl5 and ZnMg alloy intercalated graphite compounds using an optical spectroscopy technique. These intercalated metallic graphite samples were quite challenging to obtain optical reflectance spectra since they were not flat and quite thin. By using both a new method and an in situ gold evaporation technique we were able to obtain reliable reflectance spectra of our samples in the far and mid infrared range (80?7000?cm?1). We extracted the optical constants including the optical conductivity and the dielectric function from the measured reflectance spectra using a Kramers?Kronig analysis. We also extracted the dc conductivity and the plasma frequencies from the optical conductivity and dielectric functions. NbCl5 intercalated graphite samples show similar optical conductivity spectra as bare highly oriented pyrolytic graphite even though there are some differences in detail. ZnMg intercalated samples show significantly different optical conductivity spectra from the bare graphite. Optical spectroscopy is one of the most reliable experimental techniques to obtain the electronic band structures of materials. The obtained optical conductivities support the recent theoretically calculated electronic band structures of NbCl5 and ZnMg intercalated graphite compounds. Our results also provide important information of electronic structures and charge carrier properties of these two new intercalated materials for applications.

Effects of graphene imperfections on the structure of self-assembled pentacene films

The quality of pentacene films in pentacene-based devices significantly affects their performance. In this report, the effects of various defects in graphene on a pentacene film were studied with scanning tunneling microscopy. The two most common defects found in the epitaxial graphene grown on SiC(0 0 0 1) substrates were subsurface carbon nanotube (CNT) defects and step edges. The most significant perturbation of the pentacene films was induced by step edges between single-layer and bilayer graphene domains, while the effect of step edges between single-layer domains was marginal. The subsurface CNT defects slightly distorted the structure of the single-layer pentacene, but the influence of such defects decreased as the thickness of the pentacene film increased. These results suggest that the uniformity of the graphene layer is the most important parameter in the growth of high-quality pentacene films on graphene.