Phase separation and magnetic order in K-doped iron selenide superconductor
By Wei Li, Hao Ding, P. Deng, K. Chang, Can-Li Song, K. He, Lili Wang, Xucun Ma, Jiangping Hu, Xi Chen and 1 more. Nature Physics, 2011
235 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The discovery that potassium-doped iron selenide undergoes phase separation into a defect-free superconducting phase and an iron-vacancy-ordered insulating phase resolves many questions about the unusual behaviour of this iron-based superconductor. The newly discovered alkali-doped iron selenide superconductors1,2 not only reach a superconducting transition temperature as high as 32 K, but also exhibit unique characteristics that are absent from other iron-based superconductors, such as antiferromagnetically ordered insulating phases3,4, extremely high Néel transition temperatures5,6 and the presence of Fe vacancies and ordering7,8,9,10. These features have generated considerable excitement as well as confusion, regarding the delicate interplay between Fe vacancies, magnetism and superconductivity11,12,13. Here we report on molecular beam epitaxy growth of high-quality KxFe2−ySe2 thin films and in situ low-temperature scanning tunnelling microscope measurement of their atomic and electronic structures. We demonstrate that a KxFe2−ySe2 sample contains two distinct phases: an insulating phase with well-defined order of Fe vacancies, and a superconducting KFe2Se2 phase containing no Fe vacancies. An individual Fe vacancy can locally destroy superconductivity in a similar way to a magnetic impurity in conventional superconductors. Measurement of the magnetic-field dependence of the Fe-vacancy-induced bound states reveals a magnetically related bipartite order in the tetragonal iron lattice. These findings elucidate the existing controversies on this new superconductor and provide atomistic information on the interplay between magnetism and superconductivity in iron-based superconductors.
Subfields: Condensed Matter Physics, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0aeb6f95b36db88bbc4c516faeb2ecffdbdd18b7
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Citations in the corpus
- Robust and Clean Majorana Zero Mode in the Vortex Core of High-Temperature Superconductor (Li0.84Fe0.16)OHFeSe (2018, background): “This result suggests that the dimerlike defects are mostly magnetic [45].”
- Colloquium: The unexpected properties of alkali metal iron selenide superconductors (2012, background): “First-principles calculations and spin model studies (W. Li et al., 2012d) showed the dominance of the block-AFM state found experimentally.”