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Electronic and magnetic phase diagram of β-Fe1.01Se with superconductivity at 36.7 K under pressure

Nature Materials volume 8, pages 630–633 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

The discovery of new high-temperature superconductors1 based on FeAs has led to a new ‘gold rush’ in high-TC superconductivity. All of the new superconductors share the same common structural motif of FeAs layers and reach TC values up to 55 K (ref. 2). Recently, superconductivity has been reported in FeSe (ref. 3), which has the same iron pnictide layer structure, but without separating layers. Here, we report the magnetic and electronic phase diagram of β-Fe1.01Se as a function of temperature and pressure. The superconducting transition temperature increases from 8.5 to 36.7 K under an applied pressure of 8.9 GPa. It then decreases at higher pressures. A marked change in volume is observed at the same time as TC rises, owing to a collapse of the separation between the Fe2Se2 layers. No static magnetic ordering is observed for the whole p–T phase diagram. We also report that at higher pressures (starting around 7 GPa and completed at 38 GPa), Fe1.01Se transforms to a hexagonal NiAs-type structure and exhibits non-magnetic behaviour.

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Figure 1: Structural behaviour of Fe1.01Se under pressure.
Figure 2: Resistivity and Mössbauer measurements under pressure.
Figure 3: Electronic phase diagram of Fe1.01Se as a function of pressure.

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Acknowledgements

The work at Mainz was financially supported by the DFG in the Collaborative Research Center Condensed Matter Systems with Variable Many-Body Interactions (TRR 49). The work at Princeton was supported primarily by the US Department of Energy, Division of Basic Energy Sciences, Grant No. DE-FG02-98ER45706. T.M.M. gratefully acknowledges the support of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Foundation program. I.T. was partly supported by the Russian Research Foundation under grant No. 08-02-00897a and by the Presidium of RAS under grant No. 27-4.1.10. We are grateful to V. Prakapenka for XRD measurements at GeoSoilEnviroCARS (sector 13, APS) at Argonne National Laboratory.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Anorganische und Analytische Chemie, University Mainz, 55099 Mainz, Germany

    S. Medvedev, S. Naghavi, F. Casper, V. Ksenofontov & C. Felser

  2. Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry, 55128 Mainz, Germany

    S. Medvedev, I. A. Troyan, T. Palasyuk & M. I. Eremets

  3. Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, Princeton New Jersey 08544, USA

    T. M. McQueen & R. J. Cava

  4. A.V. Shubnikov Institute of Crystallography, 119333 Moscow, Russia

    I. A. Troyan

  5. Institute of Physical Chemistry PAS, Warsaw 01-224, Poland

    T. Palasyuk

  6. Department Physik, Universität Paderborn, 33095 Paderborn, Germany

    G. Wortmann

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  1. S. Medvedev
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All authors contributed equally to the work presented in this letter.

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Correspondence to C. Felser.

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Medvedev, S., McQueen, T., Troyan, I. et al. Electronic and magnetic phase diagram of β-Fe1.01Se with superconductivity at 36.7 K under pressure. Nature Mater 8, 630–633 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2491

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