Universal T c depression by irradiation defects in underdoped and overdoped cuprates?

We report on a study of the influence of defects introduced in the CuO 2 planes of cuprates in a wide range of hole dopings x . T c and electrical resistivity ρ( T ) measurements have been performed on electron-irradiated YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7 − δ and Tl 2 Ba 2 CuO 6 + x single crystals. A universal scaling between the decrease in T c and Δρ 2D × n , where Δρ 2 D is the increase of the 2D resistance induced by the defects and n is the carrier concentration equal to x , is found for all the samples investigated here. This demonstrates that the hole content is the relevant parameter to describe the transport properties all over the phase diagram, in contradiction with a recent suggestion of a change in the number of carriers from x to 1 − x at the optimal doping. Moreover, the analysis of our data suggests that strong scattering persists on the overdoped side.-2