The correlation between the appearance of a peak effect in the critical current of a superconducting material and the presence of twin boundaries, involved in a crossover between different pinning regimes, is investigated by means of dc magnetic measurements on a FeSe0.5Te0.5 crystal. In particular, by analyzing the temperature dependence of the critical current density Jc(T) for different magnetic fields H, a crossover from a weak pinning regime to a strong pinning regime has been revealed. The analysis shows that this crossover can be ascribed to the presence of twin boundary defects inside the sample, and can be associated to the onset of the peak effect and interpreted as the start of the vortex dynamic processes responsible for the increase of Jc with the field. On the basis of the information extracted by our analysis, a plausible dynamic scenario involving the contribution of the different pinning regimes depending on the applied field has been described, and the relative H(T) vortex phase diagram has been determined. Moreover, in our description, the peak in the Jc(H) curve corresponds to the end of the processes leading to the peak effect and it is confirmed to be related to the transition from an elastic to a plastic deformation regime in the vortex lattice.

The measurements of DC magnetization M as a function of magnetic field (H) and time (t) have been performed in order to study the superconducting and pinning properties of a Fe(Se, Te) iron based superconductor fabricated by means of the Bridgman technique. By performing the superconducting hysteresis loops M(H) at different temperatures in the case of perpendicular and parallel field, the critical current density Jc(H) has been extracted in the framework of the Bean critical state model for both configurations. The Jc(H) curves have shown the presence of the second magnetization peak effect that causes an anomalous increase in the field dependence of the critical current density. In order to obtain the Jc anisotropy of the sample, we have performed the ratio between perpendicular and parallel critical current density values and compared its values with the literature ones. The information regarding the pinning energy U have been extracted by means of the relaxation of the irreversible magnetization M(t) in the case H∣∣c. In particular, performing relaxation measurements at different temperatures and magnetic fields, the temperature dependence of the pinning energy U(T) at different magnetic fields has been obtained showing an anomalous temperature scaling of the curves. The presence of a maximum in the U(T) curves suggests a pinning crossover at a given field and temperature Hcr(T). The Hcr(T) values have been fitted with the equation Hcr(T) = Hcr(0) (1 − T/T*)n whose results confirm the correlation between the elastic/plastic crossover and the end of the peak effect phenomenon.

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