Evidence for fully-gapped superconductivity in BCS superconductor NiBi3

Abstract

We investigate the physical characteristics, normal state and superconducting properties of NiBi3 single crystals. Measurements of electrical resistivity, magnetization, and London penetration depth demonstrate a superconducting transition temperature, Tc=4.0 K, with a sharp transition in resistivity (Tc = 0.20 K) and RRR = 18, reflecting the high quality of NiBi3 single crystals. With both orientations H perpendicular b and H parallel b of NiBi3 single crystals, we estimated the upper critical field, Hc2, from the magnetization data. In both orientations, Hc2 is significantly smaller than the Pauli limit, suggesting the orbital pair breaking in superconducting state. The coherence length, xi(0) = 26.78 nm, electron-phonon coupling constant, lambda(e-p) = 0.81, and penetration depth, lambda0 = 181.8 nm, suggest type-II superconductivity in NiBi3. In the superconducting state, lambda(T) is best described by an s-wave BCS model and does not have linear or quadratic dependency with T, which is in line with the expectation for a node-less superconducting order parameter. The temperature evolution of the superfluid density, obtained from lambda(T), reveals a fully gapped superconductivity in NiBi3, with a superconducting gap = 4.07. All the results from the present study indicate that NiBi3 is a typical type-II, BCS-like, moderately strong coupled, and fully gapped superconductor in the dirty limit.