Neon ion irradiation studies on MgB2 superconductor

160 MeV of neon ion irradiation has been carried out on MgB₂ polycrystalline pellets at various doses. There has not been any significant change in T_c except at the highest dose of 1×10¹⁵ ions/cm². Increase in resistivity has been noticed. Resistivity data have been fitted with Bloch-Grüneisen function to extract the values of Debye temperature, residual resistivity and temperature coefficient of resistivity for irradiated as well as unirradiated samples. There has not been any significant effect on electron-phonon coupling due to irradiation as evident from Debye temperature and the electron-phonon coupling constant.