The electrical resistivity, heat capacity, superconducting upper critical magnetic field and magnetic susceptibility of NiBi 3 have been measured for the polycrystal and needle crystal. The temperature dependence of the resistivity ρ(T ) above the superconducting transition temperature can be explained by the parallel resistor formula. From ρ(T ), using the sum of two GruneisenBloch functions, we have obtained that the lower main value of the Debye temperature is 70 K and the higher one is 300 K. This is compatible with ω E ≡ 30.6 K and ω D ≡ 141 K obtained from the heat capacity using the hybrid Einstein-Debye model. We have compared the angular dependence of the critical magnetic field with that of the effective mass model and found an anisotropic mass ratio m b /m ⊥b ≈ 0.17 for the needle ( b-axis) crystal. Almost the same value of 0.14 is also obtained from the analysis of ρ(T ).

Direct observation of vortices by the scanning SQUID microscopy was made on large mesoscopic disks of an amorphous MoGe thin film. Owing to the weak pinning nature of the amorphous film, vortices are able to form geometry induced, (quasi-)symmetric configurations of polygons and concentric shells in the large disks. Systematic measurements made on selected disks allow us to trace not only how the vortex pattern evolves with magnetic field, but also how the vortex polygons change in size and rotate with respect to the disk center. The results are in good agreement with theoretical considerations for mesoscopic disks with sufficiently large diameter. A series of vortex images obtained in a disk with a pinning site reveals a unique line symmetry in vortex configurations, resulting in modifications of the shell filling rule and the magic number.

By electron-beam-induced deposition, we have succeeded in the direct fabrication of nanowires of molybdenum oxide (MoOx) and molybdenum carbide (MoC) on a SiO2 substrate set in a scanning electron microscope. In order to prepare MoOx specimens of high purity, a precursor gas of molybdenum hexacarbonyl [Mo(CO)6] is used, mixed with oxygen gas. On the other hand, MoC is grown by mixing H2O gas with the precursor gas. The electrical transport properties of the nanowires are investigated by the DC four-terminal method. A highly resistive MoOx nanowire prepared from an as-deposited specimen by annealing in air shows nonlinear current-voltage characteristics and a high photoconductivity. The resistivity ρ of an as-deposited amorphous MoC (a-MoC) nanowire takes its maximum at a temperature T ≈ 10 K and decreases to ≈ 0 with decreasing temperature. This behavior of ρ(T) indicates the possible occurrence of superconductivity in a-MoC nanowires. The characteristic of ρ(T) below the superconducting transition temperature Tc ≈ 4 K can be well explained by the quantum phase-slip model with a coherence length ξ(0) ≈ 8 nm at T = 0.

For epitaxial NbN films with thickness d, 2.0 nm ≤ d ≤ 20.5 nm, we observed a sharp superconducting transition, for which the transition temperature T(c) monotonically decreased with increasing 1/d. Regarding the suppression of T(c), the sheet resistance R(sq) dependence of T(c) closely fitted the Finkel'stein formula from localization theory, with a reasonable value of the electron mean free path comparable to atomic distance, which was used as a fitting parameter. On the other hand, the critical sheet resistance R(c), at which the superconducting-insulator transition was expected, was approximately one-third of the universal value R(q) = h/4e(2) suggested by the dirty boson model for self-duality. It is concluded that T(c) depression in the present NbN system is determined by localization theory but not the dirty boson model.

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