Superconducting and normal state properties of NiBi3

The electrical resistivity, heat capacity, superconducting upper critical magnetic field and magnetic susceptibility of NiBi3 have been measured for the polycrystal and needle crystal. The temperature dependence of the resistivity rho(T) above the superconducting transition temperature can be explained by the parallel resistor formula. From rho(T), using the sum of two Gruneisen-Bloch functions, we have obtained that the lower main value of the Debye temperature is 70K and the higher one is 300K. This is compatible with omega(E) drop 30.6K and omega(D) drop 141K obtained from the heat capacity using the hybrid Einstein-Debye model. We have compared the angular dependence of the critical magnetic field with that of the effective mass model and found an anisotropic mass ratio m parallel to(b)/m(perpendicular to b) approximate to 0.17 for the needle (parallel to b-axis) crystal. Almost the same value of 0.14 is also obtained from the analysis of rho(T).