We use scanning SQUID microscopy to investigate the behavior of vortices in the presence of twin boundaries in the pnictide superconductor Ba(Fe 1-x Co x ) 2 As 2 . We show that the vortices avoid pinning on twin boundaries. Individual vortices move in a preferential way when manipulated with the SQUID: they tend to not cross a twin boundary, but rather to move parallel to it. This behavior can be explained by the observation of enhanced superfluid density on twin boundaries in Ba(Fe 1-x Co x ) 2 As 2 . The observed repulsion from twin boundaries may be a mechanism for enhanced critical currents observed in twinned samples in pnictides and other superconductors.
2Dissipation from moving vortices is a major limitation for the use of superconductors in high current density applications. Vortex motion in superconductors is controlled by competition between the Lorentz force in the presence of an applied current, thermal energy, the interactions between vortices, and their interaction with the local pinning landscape [1][2][3][4][5]. Sources of pinning locally reduce the free energy of a vortex that passes though them, resulting in improved critical current in samples with strong pinning [1,[6][7][8][9][10]. The various types of pinning sources, including oxygen vacancies, impurities, dislocations, extended columnar defects caused by irradiation, and others [1,[11][12][13][14][15], can be broadly categorized by the dimensionality of the pinning potentiality. One technologically important two-dimensional pinning source is grain boundaries, the boundaries between grains with different crystalline orientations [16]. If the angle between the two grains is low, dislocations are formed, separated by regions that are well lattice-matched. In this case, the lattice-matched area remains superconducting and the dislocations act as pinning sites. At high angles the misorientation is hard to accommodate, the superconductivity is reduced, and the grain boundary behaves like a Josephson junction. Twin boundaries are a particular kind of grain boundary formed in materials with orthorhombic symmetry by a nearly 90 degree rotation around the c-axis, or equivalently by an interchange between the a and b crystalline axes. Twin boundaries can be found in many of the relatively new family of pnictide superconductors [17,18]. The 122 pnictide compounds undergo a tetragonal to orthorhombic transition and twin formation occurs prior to entering the superconducting phase in the underdoped part of the superconducting dome [19][20][21]. We have previously reported enhanced superfluid density on twin boundaries in the Cobalt-doped 122 pnictide family [22,23], while bulk magnetization measurements show enhanced vortex pinning associated with the presence of twins [24].In the present work we wish to examine the effect of twin boundaries in pnictides on the vortices and their dynamics. We use scanning Superconducting QUantum Interference Device (SQUID) microscopy, which is local and sensitive enough to measure both individual vortices and the loc...