No Arabic abstract
All the iron-based superconductors identified to date share a square lattice composed of Fe atoms as a common feature, despite having different crystal structures. In copper-based materials, the superconducting phase emerges not only in square lattice structures but also in ladder structures. Yet iron-based superconductors without a square lattice motif have not been found despite being actively sought out. Here, we report the discovery of pressure-induced superconductivity in the iron-based spin-ladder material BaFe2S3, a Mott insulator with striped-type magnetic ordering below ~120 K. On the application of pressure this compound exhibits a metal-insulator transition at about 11 GPa, followed by the appearance of superconductivity below Tc = 14 K, right after the onset of the metallic phase. Our findings indicate that iron-based ladder compounds represent promising material platforms, in particular for studying the fundamentals of iron-based superconductivity.
Electrical resistivity under high pressure have been measured on nominally pure SrFe2As2 up to 14 GPa. The resistivity drop appeared with increasing pressure, and we clearly observed zero resistivity. The maximum of superconducting transition temperature (Tc) is 38 K. The value is corresponding to the one of optimally doping AFe2As2 (A=Sr, Ba) system with K+ ions at the A2+ site.
The pressure effects on the antiferromagentic orders in iron-based ladder compounds CsFe$_2$Se$_3$ and BaFe$_2$S$_3$ have been studied using neutron diffraction. With identical crystal structure and similar magnetic structures, the two compounds exhibit highly contrasting magnetic behaviors under moderate external pressures. In CsFe$_2$Se$_3$ the ladders are brought much closer to each other by pressure, but the stripe-type magnetic order shows no observable change. In contrast, the stripe order in BaFe$_2$S$_3$, undergoes a quantum phase transition where an abrupt increase of N$acute{e}$el temperature by more than 50$%$ occurs at about 1 GPa, accompanied by a jump in the ordered moment. With its spin structure unchanged, BaFe$_2$S$_3$ enters an enhanced magnetic phase that bears the characteristics of an orbital selective Mott phase, which is the true neighbor of superconductivity emerging at higher pressures.
Chemical doping has recently become a very important strategy to induce superconductivity especially in complex compounds. Distinguished examples include Ba-doped La$_2$CuO$_4$ (the first high temperature superconductor), K-doped BaBiO$_3$, K-doped C$_{60}$ and Na$_{x}$CoO$_{2}cdot y$H$_{2}$O. The most recent example is F-doped LaFeAsO, which leads to a new class of high temperature superconductors. One notes that all the above dopants are non-magnetic, because magnetic atoms generally break superconducting Cooper pairs. In addition, the doping site was out of the (super)conducting structural unit (layer or framework). Here we report that superconductivity was realized by doping magnetic element cobalt into the (super)conducting-active Fe$_2$As$_2$ layers in LaFe$_{1-x}$Co$_{x}$AsO. At surprisingly small Co-doping level of $x$=0.025, the antiferromagnetic spin-density-wave transition in the parent compound is completely suppressed, and superconductivity with $T_csim $ 10 K emerges. With increasing Co content, $T_c$ shows a maximum of 13 K at $xsim 0.075$, and then drops to below 2 K at $x$=0.15. This result suggests essential differences between previous cuprate superconductor and the present iron-based arsenide one.
High-pressure electrical resistance measurements have been performed on single crystal Ba0.5Sr0.5Fe2As2 platelets to pressures of 16 GPa and temperatures down to 10 K using designer diamond anvils under quasi-hydrostatic conditions with an insulating steatite pressure medium. The resistance measurements show evidence of pressure-induced superconductivity with an onset transition temperature at ~31 K and zero resistance at ~22 K for a pressure of 3.3 GPa. The transition temperature decreases gradually with increasing in pressure before completely disappearing for pressures above 12 GPa. The present results provide experimental evidence that a solid solution of two 122-type materials, e.g., Ba1-x.SrxFe2As2 (0 < x <1), can also exhibit superconductivity under high pressure
The rich phenomena in the FeSe and related compounds have attracted great interests as it provides fertile material to gain further insight into the mechanism of high temperature superconductivity. A natural follow-up work was to look into the possibility of superconductivity in MnSe. It was shown that MnP becomes superconducting with Tc ~ 1 K under pressure. We demonstrated in this work that high pressure can effectively suppress the complex magnetic characters of MnSe crystal when observed at ambient condition. MnSe under pressure is found to undergo several structural transformations: the cubic phase first partially transforms to the hexagonal phase at about 12 GPa, the crystal exhibits the coexistence of cubic, hexagonal and orthorhombic phases from 16 GPa to 30 GPa, and above 30 GPa the crystal shows a single orthorhombic phase. Superconductivity with Tc ~ 5 K was first observed at pressure ~12 GPa by magnetic measurements (~16 GPa by resistive measurements). The highest Tc is ~ 9 K (magnetic result) at ~35 GPa. Our observations suggest the observed superconductivity may closely relate to the pressure-induced structural change. However, the interface between the metallic and insulating boundaries may also play an important role to the pressure induced superconductivity in MnSe.