Synthesis of Au-doped Mg1−xAuxB2 superconductors

The recent discovery of the MgB2 superconductor has renewed the great interest in the search for superconductivity in the inter-metallic diboride compounds. Here we report the synthesis of a series of Au-doped MgB2 by solid-state reactions. The obtained Mg1−xAuxB2 samples could be indexed by a hexagonal unit cell with a=4.612 Å and c=8.525 Å. The resistive measurements showed that the addition of Au to MgB2 results in a slightly lower superconducting transition temperature at Tc∼37 K than the pure binary MgB2, which is expected.