Iron-based superconductors (FeSC) are iron-containing chemical compounds whose superconducting properties were discovered in 2006. [2] [3] In 2008, led by recently discovered iron pnictide compounds (originally known as oxypnictides), they were in the first stages of experimentation and implementation. [4] (Previously most high-temperature superconductors were cuprates and being based on layers of copper and oxygen sandwiched between other substances (La, Ba, Hg)).
This new type of superconductors is based instead on conducting layers of iron and a pnictide (chemical elements in group 15 of the periodic table, here typically arsenic (As) and phosphorus (P)) and seems to show promise as the next generation of high temperature superconductors. [5]
Much of the interest is because the new compounds are very different from the cuprates and may help lead to a theory of non-BCS-theory superconductivity.
More recently these have been called the ferropnictides. The first ones found belong to the group of oxypnictides. Some of the compounds have been known since 1995, [6] and their semiconductive properties have been known and patented since 2006. [7] It has also been found that some iron chalcogens superconduct. [8] The undoped β-FeSe is the simplest iron-based superconductor but with the diverse properties. [9] It has a critical temperature (Tc) of 8 K at normal pressure, and 36.7 K under high pressure [10] and by means of intercalation. The combination of both intercalation and higher pressure results in re-emerging superconductivity at Tc of up to 48 K (see, [9] [11] and references therein). A subset of iron-based superconductors with properties similar to the oxypnictides, known as the 122 iron arsenides, attracted attention in 2008 due to their relative ease of synthesis.
Oxypnictide | Tc (K) |
---|---|
LaO0.89F0.11FeAs | 26 [12] |
LaO0.9F0.2FeAs | 28.5 [13] |
CeFeAsO0.84F0.16 | 41 [12] |
SmFeAsO0.9F0.1 | 43 [12] [14] |
La0.5Y0.5FeAsO0.6 | 43.1 [15] |
NdFeAsO0.89F0.11 | 52 [12] |
PrFeAsO0.89F0.11 | 52 [16] |
ErFeAsO1−y | 45 [17] |
Al-32522 (CaAlOFeAs) | 30(As), 16.6 (P) [18] |
Al-42622 (CaAlOFeAs) | 28.3(As), 17.2 (P) [19] |
GdFeAsO0.85 | 53.5 [20] |
BaFe1.8Co0.2As2 | 25.3 [21] |
SmFeAsO~0.85 | 55 [22] |
Non-oxypnictide | Tc (K) |
---|---|
Ba0.6K0.4Fe2As2 | 38 [23] |
Ca0.6Na0.4Fe2As2 | 26 [24] |
CaFe0.9Co0.1AsF | 22 [25] |
Sr0.5Sm0.5FeAsF | 56 [26] |
LiFeAs | 18 [27] [28] [29] |
NaFeAs | 9–25 [30] [31] |
FeSe | <27 [32] [33] |
LaFeSiH | 11 [34] |
The oxypnictides such as LaOFeAs are often referred to as the '1111' pnictides.
The crystalline material, known chemically as LaOFeAs, stacks iron and arsenic layers, where the electrons flow, between planes of lanthanum and oxygen. Replacing up to 11 percent of the oxygen with fluorine improved the compound – it became superconductive at 26 kelvin, the team reports in the March 19, 2008 Journal of the American Chemical Society. Subsequent research from other groups suggests that replacing the lanthanum in LaOFeAs with other rare earth elements such as cerium, samarium, neodymium and praseodymium leads to superconductors that work at 52 kelvin. [5]
Iron pnictide superconductors crystallize into the [FeAs] layered structure alternating with spacer or charge reservoir block. [12] The compounds can thus be classified into "1111" system RFeAsO (R: the rare earth element) including LaFeAsO, [3] SmFeAsO, [14] PrFeAsO, [22] etc.; "122" type BaFe2As2, [23] SrFe2As2 [35] or CaFe2As2; [24] "111" type LiFeAs, [27] [28] [29] NaFeAs, [30] [31] [36] and LiFeP. [37] Doping or applied pressure will transform the compounds into superconductors. [12] [38] [39]
Compounds such as Sr2ScFePO3 discovered in 2009 are referred to as the '42622' family, as FePSr2ScO3. [40] Noteworthy is the synthesis of (Ca4Al2O6−y)(Fe2Pn2) (or Al-42622(Pn); Pn = As and P) using high-pressure synthesis technique. Al-42622(Pn) exhibit superconductivity for both Pn = As and P with the transition temperatures of 28.3 K and 17.1 K, respectively. The a-lattice parameters of Al-42622(Pn) (a = 3.713 Å and 3.692 Å for Pn = As and P, respectively) are smallest among the iron-pnictide superconductors. Correspondingly, Al-42622(As) has the smallest As–Fe–As bond angle (102.1°) and the largest As distance from the Fe planes (1.5 Å). [19] High-pressure technique also yields (Ca3Al2O5−y)(Fe2Pn2) (Pn = As and P), the first reported iron-based superconductors with the perovskite-based '32522' structure. The transition temperature (Tc) is 30.2 K for Pn = As and 16.6 K for Pn = P. The emergence of superconductivity is ascribed to the small tetragonal a-axis lattice constant of these materials. From these results, an empirical relationship was established between the a-axis lattice constant and Tc in iron-based superconductors. [18]
In 2009, it was shown that undoped iron pnictides had a magnetic quantum critical point deriving from competition between electronic localization and itinerancy. [41]
Similarly to superconducting cuprates, the properties of iron based superconductors change dramatically with doping. Parent compounds of FeSC are usually metals (unlike the cuprates) but, similarly to cuprates, are ordered antiferromagnetically that often termed as a spin-density wave (SDW). The superconductivity (SC) emerges upon either hole or electron doping. In general, the phase diagram is similar to the cuprates. [42]
Superconducting transition temperatures are listed in the tables (some at high pressure). BaFe1.8Co0.2As2 is predicted to have an upper critical field of 43 tesla from the measured coherence length of 2.8 nm. [21]
In 2011, Japanese scientists made a discovery which increased a metal compound's superconductivity by immersing iron-based compounds in hot alcoholic beverages such as red wine. [48] [49] Earlier reports indicated that excess Fe is the cause of the bicollinear antiferromagnetic order and is not in favor of superconductivity. Further investigation revealed that weak acid has the ability to deintercalate the excess Fe from the interlayer sites. Therefore, weak acid annealing suppresses the antiferromagnetic correlation by deintercalating the excess Fe and, hence superconductivity is achieved. [50] [51]
There is an empirical correlation of the transition temperature with electronic band structure: the Tc maximum is observed when some of the Fermi surface stays in proximity to Lifshitz topological transition. [42] Similar correlation has been later reported for high-Tc cuprates that indicates possible similarity of the superconductivity mechanisms in these two families of high temperature superconductors. [52]
The critical temperature is increased further in thin-films of iron chalcogenides on suitable substrates. In 2015, a Tc of around 105–111 K was observed in thin films of iron selenide grown on strontium titanate. [53]
Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in superconductors: materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic fields are expelled from the material. Unlike an ordinary metallic conductor, whose resistance decreases gradually as its temperature is lowered, even down to near absolute zero, a superconductor has a characteristic critical temperature below which the resistance drops abruptly to zero. An electric current through a loop of superconducting wire can persist indefinitely with no power source.
Unconventional superconductors are materials that display superconductivity which is not explained by the usual BCS theory or its extension, the Eliashberg theory. The pairing in unconventional superconductors may originate from some other mechanism than the electron–phonon interaction. Alternatively, a superconductor is unconventional if the superconducting order parameter transforms according to a non-trivial irreducible representation of the point group or space group of the system. Per definition, superconductors that break additional symmetries to U (1) symmetry are known as unconventional superconductors.
High-temperature superconductivity is superconductivity in materials with a critical temperature above 77 K, the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. They are only "high-temperature" relative to previously known superconductors, which function at colder temperatures, close to absolute zero. The "high temperatures" are still far below ambient, and therefore require cooling. The first breakthrough of high-temperature superconductor was discovered in 1986 by IBM researchers Georg Bednorz and K. Alex Müller. Although the critical temperature is around 35.1 K, this new type of superconductor was readily modified by Ching-Wu Chu to make the first high-temperature superconductor with critical temperature 93 K. Bednorz and Müller were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1987 "for their important break-through in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials". Most high-Tc materials are type-II superconductors.
A room-temperature superconductor is a hypothetical material capable of displaying superconductivity above 0 °C, operating temperatures which are commonly encountered in everyday settings. As of 2023, the material with the highest accepted superconducting temperature was highly pressurized lanthanum decahydride, whose transition temperature is approximately 250 K (−23 °C) at 200 GPa.
Bismuth strontium calcium copper oxide (BSCCO, pronounced bisko), is a type of cuprate superconductor having the generalized chemical formula Bi2Sr2Can−1CunO2n+4+x, with n = 2 being the most commonly studied compound (though n = 1 and n = 3 have also received significant attention). Discovered as a general class in 1988, BSCCO was the first high-temperature superconductor which did not contain a rare-earth element.
Cuprate superconductors are a family of high-temperature superconducting materials made of layers of copper oxides (CuO2) alternating with layers of other metal oxides, which act as charge reservoirs. At ambient pressure, cuprate superconductors are the highest temperature superconductors known. However, the mechanism by which superconductivity occurs is still not understood.
Superconductors can be classified in accordance with several criteria that depend on physical properties, current understanding, and the expense of cooling them or their material.
In chemistry, oxypnictides are a class of materials composed of oxygen, a pnictogen and one or more other elements. Although this group of compounds has been recognized since 1995, interest in these compounds increased dramatically after the publication of the superconducting properties of LaOFeP and LaOFeAs which were discovered in 2006 and 2008. In these experiments the oxide was partly replaced by fluoride.
The 122 iron arsenide unconventional superconductors are part of a new class of iron-based superconductors. They form in the tetragonal I4/mmm, ThCr2Si2 type, crystal structure. The shorthand name "122" comes from their stoichiometry; the 122s have the chemical formula AEFe2Pn2, where AE stands for alkaline earth metal (Ca, Ba Sr or Eu) and Pn is pnictide (As, P, etc.). These materials become superconducting under pressure and also upon doping. The maximum superconducting transition temperature found to date is 38 K in the Ba0.6K0.4Fe2As2. The microscopic description of superconductivity in the 122s is yet unclear.
Superstripes is a generic name for a phase with spatial broken symmetry that favors the onset of superconducting or superfluid quantum order. This scenario emerged in the 1990s when non-homogeneous metallic heterostructures at the atomic limit with a broken spatial symmetry have been found to favor superconductivity. Before a broken spatial symmetry was expected to compete and suppress the superconducting order. The driving mechanism for the amplification of the superconductivity critical temperature in superstripes matter has been proposed to be the shape resonance in the energy gap parameters ∆n that is a type of Fano resonance for coexisting condensates.
Distrontium ruthenate, also known as strontium ruthenate, is an oxide of strontium and ruthenium with the chemical formula Sr2RuO4. It was the first reported perovskite superconductor that did not contain copper. Strontium ruthenate is structurally very similar to the high-temperature cuprate superconductors, and in particular, is almost identical to the lanthanum doped superconductor (La, Sr)2CuO4. However, the transition temperature for the superconducting phase transition is 0.93 K (about 1.5 K for the best sample), which is much lower than the corresponding value for cuprates.
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Chen Xianhui is a Chinese physicist. He is a Changjiang professor of physics of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). He was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 2015 and is known for his breakthroughs on iron-based superconductors. He won the State Natural Science Award with Zhao Zhongxian and others in 2013 and the Bernd T. Matthias Prize for Superconducting Materials in 2015. His research is mainly on experimental condensed matter physics and materials science.
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Oxyarsenides or arsenide oxides are chemical compounds formally containing the group AsO, with one arsenic and one oxygen atom. The arsenic and oxygen are not bound together as in arsenates or arsenites, instead they make a separate presence bound to the cations (metals), and could be considered as a mixed arsenide-oxide compound. So a compound with OmAsn requires cations to balance a negative charge of 2m+3n. The cations will have charges of +2 or +3. The trications are often rare earth elements or actinides. They are in the category of oxypnictide compounds.
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Pengcheng Dai is a Chinese American experimental physicist and academic. He is the Sam and Helen Worden Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University.