Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

Superconductivity

Strain yourself

Nature volume 394, pages 419–421 (1998)Cite this article

On page 453 of this issue1, J.-P. Locquet and colleagues show that the superconducting transition, or critical, temperature (Tc) of a particular copper oxide can be doubled by the clever use of epitaxial strain. Increases in transition temperature using pressure have been accomplished before, but the increase obtained here is much larger than any achieved by using standard pressure techniques.

Thin solid films have been used for many years to study materials under physical conditions that cannot be achieved in the bulk. Very large pressure can be applied, and the intrinsically different behaviour of lower-dimensional systems can be observed, for example. Films have shown us many new phenomena, including giant magnetoresistance, dimensional crossover in superconducting multilayers, competition between superconductivity and magnetism, and the high reflectivity of X-ray mirrors2,3,4. The properties of thin films are different from those in the bulk largely because films are grown artificially, under conditions far from equilibrium (usually using a variety of sophisticated, high-vacuum techniques).

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: La1.9Sr0.1CuO4, on a substrate that forces it to distort its usual crystal structure (the actual strain is exaggerated here).

References

  1. Locquet, J.-P.et al. Nature 394, 453–456 (1998).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Falicov, L. M.et al. J. Mater. Res. 5, 1299 (1990).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Dhez, P. & Weisbuch, C. (eds) Physics, Fabrication and Applications of Multilayered Structures (Plenum, New York, 1988).

  4. Shinjo, T. & Ono, T. J. Mag. Mag. Mater. 177, 31 (1998).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Choy, J. H., Kwon, S.-J. & Park, G.-S. Science 280, 1589–1592 (1998).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Chakravarty, S.et al. Science 261, 337–340 (1993).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physics Department, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, 92093-0319, California, USA

    Ivan K. Schuller

Authors
  1. Ivan K. Schuller
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Schuller, I. Strain yourself. Nature 394, 419–421 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/28735

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/28735

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing