Discussion with Yun Suk about VTI Thermal Conductivity and SmB6 Paper (7 July 2021)
About the thermal conductivity project for VTI tail:
Need tot redo thermal conductivity tail for the VTI (a 4He cryostat in PSC)
Need to wind at least 14 Pt-W wires to be at least 100 Ohm (should ask JP if 100 Ohms is okay)
2 thermometers need 4 wires each
Heater needs 2 wires
Resistivity option (in parallel with TC) would need 4 wires
Need to wait for Ian to get back from vacation to show us how to wrap the wires
Instead of using Ag bar to support thermometers, use tension in the V+/- and I+/- wires attached to G-10 rods for support
Shorten the Ag rod on which the heater is attached
Some work needed to get labview to work at PSC (need to use Tristin's temperature controller labview, as it is required for the entire labview system he wrote for TC option)
The heater itself is okay, but needs to be re-wired
Thermometers need to be changed (we have 3 good cernox thermometers)
The project should only take like a month
About SmB6:
New transport data on ~5% doped SmB6 has been taken
Looks like there is surface conduction at very low conduction
Would it be worth using corbino-disk on the 5% in case we can separate the surface? Probably not for this paper at least.
There appears to be other steps in Zebrodskii plot that are difficult to assign to an expected conduction regime, although at those temperatures and looking at raw data, it may be due to the surface state
For the paper, need to determine the actual % of Gd
Yun Suk is planning to had WDS done on all the samples - should take 2 hrs @ $150/hr
What is the difference between WDS and EDS? Answer: practically, WDS has better energy resolution and therefore is better for resolving the composition in which you have overlapping peaks in your spectra [1].
The story of the paper will be more or less a supporting experimental perspective of Brian Skinner's paper [2]
We will discuss more about putting the paper together soon.