Silver route to cuprate analogs

Jakub Gawraczyński; Dominik Kurzydłowski; Russell A Ewings; Subrahmanyam Bandaru; Wojciech Gadomski; Zoran Mazej; Giampiero Ruani; Ilaria Bergenti; Tomasz Jaroń; Andrew Ozarowski; Stephen Hill; Piotr J Leszczyński; Kamil Tokár; Mariana Derzsi; Paolo Barone; Krzysztof Wohlfeld; José Lorenzana; Wojciech Grochala

doi:10.1073/pnas.1812857116

Silver route to cuprate analogs

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Jan 29;116(5):1495-1500. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1812857116. Epub 2019 Jan 16.

Authors

Jakub Gawraczyński^{1

2}, Dominik Kurzydłowski^{1

3}, Russell A Ewings⁴, Subrahmanyam Bandaru¹, Wojciech Gadomski², Zoran Mazej⁵, Giampiero Ruani⁶, Ilaria Bergenti⁶, Tomasz Jaroń¹, Andrew Ozarowski⁷, Stephen Hill^{7

8}, Piotr J Leszczyński¹, Kamil Tokár^{9

10}, Mariana Derzsi^{1

10}, Paolo Barone¹¹, Krzysztof Wohlfeld¹², José Lorenzana¹³, Wojciech Grochala¹⁴

Affiliations

¹ Center of New Technologies, University of Warsaw, 02089 Warsaw, Poland.
² Faculty of Chemistry, University of Warsaw, 02093 Warsaw, Poland.
³ Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, 01938 Warsaw, Poland.
⁴ ISIS Facility, Science and Technology Facilities Council Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Didcot OX11 0QX, United Kingdom.
⁵ Department of Inorganic Chemistry and Technology, Jožef Stefan Institute, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.
⁶ Institute of Nanostructured Materials (ISMN), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 40129 Bologna, Italy.
⁷ National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32310.
⁸ Department of Physics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306.
⁹ Institute of Physics, Slovak Academy of Sciences, 845 11 Bratislava, Slovakia.
¹⁰ Advanced Technologies Research Institute, Faculty of Materials Science and Technology in Trnava, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, 917 24 Trnava, Slovakia.
¹¹ Superconducting and Other Innovative Materials and Devices Institute (SPIN), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 66100 Chieti, Italy.
¹² Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, 02093 Warsaw, Poland.
¹³ Institute for Complex Systems (ISC), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma "La Sapienza," 00185 Rome, Italy jose.lorenzana@cnr.it w.grochala@cent.uw.edu.pl.
¹⁴ Center of New Technologies, University of Warsaw, 02089 Warsaw, Poland; jose.lorenzana@cnr.it w.grochala@cent.uw.edu.pl.

Abstract

The parent compound of high-[Formula: see text] superconducting cuprates is a unique Mott insulator consisting of layers of spin-[Formula: see text] ions forming a square lattice and with a record high in-plane antiferromagnetic coupling. Compounds with similar characteristics have long been searched for without success. Here, we use a combination of experimental and theoretical tools to show that commercial [Formula: see text] is an excellent cuprate analog with remarkably similar electronic parameters to [Formula: see text] but larger buckling of planes. Two-magnon Raman scattering and inelastic neutron scattering reveal a superexchange constant reaching 70% of that of a typical cuprate. We argue that structures that reduce or eliminate the buckling of the [Formula: see text] planes could have an antiferromagnetic coupling that matches or surpasses the cuprates.

Keywords: cuprates; quantum magnetism; silver fluorides; strong correlation; superconductivity.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't