Contamination from magnetic starting materials in flux-grown single crystals of RFeAsO superconductors
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While the flux growth often provides the best method for obtaining single crystals of new-novel materials, the process is prone to producing crystals with trapped second-phase inclusions. In the case of NdFeAsO single crystals grown out of NaAs flux under ambient pressure, some crystals show a lambda anomaly in the specific heat curve at ~12 K. This anomaly is missing in other crystals from the same batch. We show that the lambda anomaly at 12 K is from residual NdAs starting material which is mainly on the edges of the crystals. The isothermal magnetization of LaFeAsO at 300 K clearly illustrates the effect of ferromagnetic impurities on the magnetic properties of LaFeAsO crystals.
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This article is from Physical Review B 84 (2011): 012501, doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.84.012501.