Fabrication mechanism of FeSe superconductors with high-energy ball milling aided sintering process

FeSe Superconducting bulks with high content of superconducting PbO-type β-FeSe phase were prepared with high-energy ball milling (HEBM) aided sintering process. During this process, precursor powders with certain Fe/Se ratio were ball milled first then sintered. The influences of HEBM process as well as initial Fe/Se ratio on the phase evolution process were systematically discussed. With HEBM process and proper initial Fe/Se ratio, the formation of non-superconducting hexagonal δ-FeSe phase were effectively avoided. FeSe bulk with the critical temperature of 9.0 K was obtained through a simple one-step sintering process with lower sintering temperature. Meanwhile, the phase evolution mechanism of the HEBM precursor powders during sintering was deduced based on both the thermodynamic analysis and step-by-step sintering results. The key function of the HEBM process was to provide a high uniformity of chemical composition distribution, thus to successfully avoide the formation of intermediate product during sintering, including FeSe2 and Fe7Se8. Therefore, the fundamental principal for the synthesis of FeSe superconductors were concluded as: HEBM aided sintering process, with the sintering temperature of >635 °C and a slow cooling process.