Years of experiments on various types of high-temperature (high-Tc) superconductors—materials that offer hope for energy-saving applications such as zero-loss electrical power lines—have turned up an amazing array of complex behaviors among the electrons that in some instances pair up to carry current with no resistance, and in others stop the flow of current in its tracks. The variety of these exotic electronic phenomena is a key reason it has been so hard to identify unifying concepts to explain why high-Tc superconductivity occurs in these promising materials.
In all known types of high-Tc superconductors—copper-based (cuprate), iron-based, and so-called heavy fermion compounds—superconductivity emerges from the "extinction" of antiferromagnetism, the ordered arrangement of electrons on adjacent atoms having anti-aligned spin directions. Electrons arrayed like tiny magnets in this alternating spin pattern are at their lowest energy state, but this antiferromagnetic order is not beneficial to superconductivity.
However if the interactions between electrons that cause antiferromagnetic order can be maintained while the actual order itself is prevented, then superconductivity can appear. "In this situation, whenever one electron approaches another electron, it tries to anti-align its magnetic state," Davis said. Even if the electrons never achieve antiferromagnetic order, these antiferromagnetic interactions exert the dominant influence on the behavior of the material. "This antiferromagnetic influence is universal across all these types of materials," Davis said.
Many scientists have proposed that these antiferromagnetic interactions play a role in the ability of electrons to eventually pair up with anti-aligned spins—a condition necessary for them to carry current with no resistance. The complicating factor has been the existence of many different types of "intertwined" electronic phases that also emerge in the different types of high-Tc superconductors—sometimes appearing to compete with superconductivity and sometimes coexisting with it.
In the cuprates, for example, regions of antiferromagnetic alignment can alternate with "holes" (vacancies formerly occupied by electrons), giving these materials a "striped" pattern of charge density waves. In some instances this striped phase can be disrupted by another phase that results in distortions of the stripes. In iron-based superconductors, Davis' experiments revealed a nematic liquid-crystal-like phase. And in the heavy fermion superconductors, other exotic electronic states occur.
In the current paper, Davis and Lee propose and demonstrate within a simple model that antiferromagnetic electron interactions can drive both superconductivity and the various intertwined phases across different families of high-Tc superconductors. These intertwined phases and the emergence of superconductivity, they say, can be explained by how the antiferromagnetic influence interacts with another variable in their theoretical description, namely the "Fermi surface topology."
The theory developed by Lee incorporates the overarching antiferromagnetic electron interactions and the known differences in Fermi surface from material to material. Using calculations to "dial up" the strength of the magnetic interactions or vary the Fermi surface characteristics, the theory can predict the types of electronic phases that should emerge up to and including the superconductivity for all those different conditions.
The next step is to search through new materials and use the theory to identify which should operate in similar ways—and then put them to the test to see if they follow the predictions.
If the search pays off, it could lead to the identification or development of superconductors that can be used even more effectively than those that are known today—potentially transforming our energy landscape.
This story is reprinted from material from Brookhaven National Laboratory, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier. Link to original source.