Growth and physical properties of single crystalline MgB2

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Abstract
The recent discovery of the binary metallic MgB2 with a superconducting transition temperature of 39 K (ref. 1) has attracted great scientific(2-12) and applicatory interests(13-15). Although quite a few scientifically important issues have been refined using polycrystalline samples(2-6), many physical quantities still remained to be clearly verified for the single crystals. Thus, the growth of single-crystal specimen is an urgent subject. Here we report on the growth of high-quality MgB2 single crystals. With a hexagonal plate shape the crystal showed shiny surfaces with a length up to about 60 mm and a thickness of 2 - 5 mm. High-resolution transmission electron microscope image indicates hexagonal structure with an a-axis lattice constant of 3.09 Å. A very sharp superconducting transition at 38 K with a resistive transition width of 0.3 K, and very weak pinning behaviors were observed. Both superconducting parameter such as upper critical field and normal state property such as magnetoresistance showed quite a large anisotropy.

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