Effect of spin paramagnetism on upper critical field of disordered nanocrystalline PbMo6S8 superconductor

Ignoring the paramagnetic effect Niu and Hampshire [H.J. Niu, D.P. Hampshire, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91 (2003) 027002] have claimed that a disordered nanocrystalline sample of the Chevrel phase superconductor PbMo6S8, having a grain size of 20 nm, corresponds to an upper critical field of 110T. Whether the paramagnetic effect is indeed negligible in this sample or not has been investigated here by using the Werthamer-Helfand-Hohenberg theory of upper critical field of dirty superconductors. The extent of the paramagnetic effect is obtained by matching the experimental values of the upper critical field for various temperatures with those calculated from the Werthamer-Helfand-Hohenberg theory. It has been found that the 20 nm superconductor involves sufficient paramagnetic effect such that the value of the upper critical field cannot be larger than similar to 70 T. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.