Abstract
All the iron-based superconductors identified so far 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.
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Acknowledgements
This work was partly supported by JSPS Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) (23244068), for Scientific Research (B) (23340097, 24340088 and 26287073) and for Young Scientists (B) (26800175), the Strategic Research Base Development Program for Private Universities (2009, S0901022) of MEXT and the Grant Program of the Yamada Science Foundation. The synchrotron radiation X-ray experiments were performed at BL-18C of KEK-PF under the approval of Proposal No. 2014G587.
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H.T., Y.N. and K.O. designed the research; Y.H., F.D., Y.Ueda and K.O. synthesized the samples and performed the resistivity, magnetic-susceptibility and specific-heat measurements; M.A., Y.N. and T.J.S. performed the neutron-diffraction measurements and analysed the data; T.K. performed the Mössbauer measurements; A.S., C.K., H.S. and H.T. performed the resistivity measurements under high pressure at zero magnetic field; A.S., C.K., H.T., K.M. and Y.Uwatoko performed the resistivity measurements under high pressure at finite magnetic fields; T.Y. performed the resistivity and magnetic-susceptibility measurements under high pressure using the cubic anvil press; and C.K., S.N. and H.T. performed the X-ray diffraction measurements under high pressure. All the authors discussed the results. H.T., Y.N., T.K. and K.O. wrote the paper and all the authors read and commented on the manuscript.
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Takahashi, H., Sugimoto, A., Nambu, Y. et al. Pressure-induced superconductivity in the iron-based ladder material BaFe2S3. Nature Mater 14, 1008–1012 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4351
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4351