Proton relaxation in the superconducting organic solid (BEDT-TTF)2Cu(NCS)2: evidence for relaxation by localized paramagnetic centers

Abstract

The nonexponential character of the build-up of the nuclear magnetization usually increases on lowering the temperature. Superconducting fluctuations have been offered in a speculative way as an explanation for the nonexponential spin relaxation. We have observed the same relaxation behaviour in our investigation of the proton spin relaxation in (BEDT-TTF)2Cu(NCS)2 which is an organic conductor at room temperature and becomes a superconductor at Tc=10.4 K at ambient pressure. As we noticed during preliminary measurements that the degree of deviation from exponential relaxation depends on the sample under study we decided to do experiments under controlled conditions of sample preparation.