Discovery of Dome-Shaped Superconducting Phase and Anisotropic Transport in a van der Waals Layered Candidate NbIrTe4 under Pressure

Meiling Jin; Peng Yu; Changzeng Fan; Qiang Li; Panlong Kong; Zhiwei Shen; Xiaomei Qin; Zhenhua Chi; Changqing Jin; Guangtong Liu; Guyue Zhong; Gang Xu; Zheng Liu; Jinlong Zhu

doi:10.1002/advs.202103250

Discovery of Dome-Shaped Superconducting Phase and Anisotropic Transport in a van der Waals Layered Candidate NbIrTe₄ under Pressure

Adv Sci (Weinh). 2021 Dec;8(24):e2103250. doi: 10.1002/advs.202103250. Epub 2021 Nov 1.

Authors

Meiling Jin^{1

2}, Peng Yu³, Changzeng Fan⁴, Qiang Li⁵, Panlong Kong², Zhiwei Shen⁴, Xiaomei Qin⁵, Zhenhua Chi⁶, Changqing Jin⁷, Guangtong Liu⁷, Guyue Zhong⁸, Gang Xu⁸, Zheng Liu^{9

10}, Jinlong Zhu¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics and Shenzhen Engineering Research Center for Frontier Materials Synthesis at High Pressures, Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), Shenzhen, 518055, China.
² Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research (HPSTAR), Beijing, 100094, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Metastable Materials Science and Technology, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, 066004, China.
⁵ Department of Physics, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, 200234, China.
⁶ Institute of High Pressure Physics, School of Physical Science and Technology, Ningbo University, Ningbo, 315211, China.
⁷ Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China.
⁸ Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center and School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China.
⁹ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, 639798, Singapore.
¹⁰ School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798, Singapore.

Abstract

The unique electronic structure and crystal structure driven by external pressure in transition metal tellurides (TMTs) can host unconventional quantum states. Here, the discovery of pressure-induced phase transition at ≈2 GPa, and dome-shaped superconducting phase emerged in van der Waals layered NbIrTe₄ is reported. The highest critical temperature (T_c ) is ≈5.8 K at pressure of ≈16 GPa, where the interlayered Te-Te covalent bonds form simultaneously derived from the synchrotron diffraction data, indicating the hosting structure of superconducting evolved from low-pressure two-dimensional (2D) phase to three-dimensional (3D) structure with pressure higher than 30 GPa. Strikingly, the authors have found an anisotropic transport in the vicinity of the superconducting state, suggesting the emergence of a "stripe"-like phase. The dome-shaped superconducting phase and anisotropic transport are possibly due to the spatial modulation of interlayer Josephson coupling .

Keywords: anisotropic transport; high pressure; phase transition; superconductivity.

Abstract

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