A Superconducting Praseodymium Nickelate with Infinite Layer Structure

Motoki Osada; Bai Yang Wang; Berit H Goodge; Kyuho Lee; Hyeok Yoon; Keita Sakuma; Danfeng Li; Masashi Miura; Lena F Kourkoutis; Harold Y Hwang

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c01392

A Superconducting Praseodymium Nickelate with Infinite Layer Structure

Nano Lett. 2020 Aug 12;20(8):5735-5740. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c01392. Epub 2020 Jul 1.

Authors

Motoki Osada^{1

2}, Bai Yang Wang^{2

3

4}, Berit H Goodge^{5

4}, Kyuho Lee^{2

3}, Hyeok Yoon^{2

6}, Keita Sakuma⁷, Danfeng Li^{2

6}, Masashi Miura^{6

7}, Lena F Kourkoutis^{5

4}, Harold Y Hwang^{2

6}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, United States.
² Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, California 94025, United States.
³ Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, United States.
⁴ Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, United States.
⁵ School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, United States.
⁶ Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, United States.
⁷ Graduate School of Science & Technology, Seikei University, Musashino, Tokyo 180-8633, Japan.

PMID: 32574061
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c01392

Abstract

A variety of nickel oxide compounds have long been studied for their manifestation of various correlated electron phenomena. Recently, superconductivity was observed in nanoscale infinite layer nickelate thin films of Nd_0.8Sr_0.2NiO₂, epitaxially stabilized on SrTiO₃ substrates via topotactic reduction from the perovskite precursor phase. Here, we present the synthesis and properties of PrNiO₂ thin films on SrTiO₃. Upon doping in Pr_0.8Sr_0.2NiO₂, we observe superconductivity with a transition temperature of 7-12 K and robust critical current density at 2 K of 334 kA/cm². These findings indicate that superconductivity in the infinite layer nickelates is relatively insensitive to the details of the rare earth 4f configuration. Furthermore, they motivate the exploration of a broader family of compounds based on two-dimensional NiO₂ planes, which will enable systematic investigation of the superconducting and normal state properties and their underlying mechanisms.

Keywords: Nickelate; PrNiO2; infinite layer; superconductivity; thin film.