Scanning tunneling spectroscopy on neutron irradiated MgB2 thin films

Neutron irradiation was performed on MgB2 thin films grown by hybrid physical chemical vapor deposition. Samples irradiated with different neutron fluences, having different critical temperatures, were studied by scanning tunneling spectroscopy in order to investigate the effect of the introduced disorder on the superconducting and spectroscopic properties. A monotonic increase of the pi gap with increasing disorder was found. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.