Very high upper critical fields of F-doped Fe-based layered superconductors NdO0.88F0.12FeAs and CeO0.88F0.12FeAs

Using the solid state reaction method, we have synthesized the polycrystalline F-doped NdO0.88F0.12FeAs and CeO0.88F0.12FeAs with the superconducting transition temperatures at about 48 and 40 K, respectively. To obtain the upper critical field H (c2) of Nd(Ce)O0.88F0.12FeAs samples, we measured the electrical resistivity under magnetic field up to 14 T. Based on the Werthamer-Helfand-Hohenberg (WHH) relation together with the H (c2)(T) curves in a relatively high field, we estimated that these superconductors have a rather high upper critical field of about 115 T for Nd-based and 107 T for Ce-based samples, indicating the similarities between these ReO1-x F (x) FeAs (Re = rare earth element) superconductors and high T (c) cuprate superconductors.