Direct visualization of phase separation between superconducting and nematic domains in Co-doped CaFe2As2 close to a first-order phase transition
Entity
UAM. Departamento de Física de la Materia CondensadaPublisher
American Physical SocietyDate
2018-01-09Citation
10.1103/PhysRevB.97.014505
Physical Review B 97.1 (2018): 014505
ISSN
2469-9969 (online); 2469-9950 (print)DOI
10.1103/PhysRevB.97.014505Funded by
Work done in Madrid was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Grants No. FIS2014-54498-R, No. MDM-2014-0377, No. MAT2014-52405-C2-2-R, No. RYC-2014-16626, and No. RYC-2014-15093), by the Comunidad de Madrid through program Nanofrontmag-CM (S2013/MIT-2850), by European Research Council PNICTEYES Grant Agreement No. 679080, by FP7-PEOPLE-2013-CIG 618321, by the EU Flagship Graphene Core1 under Grant Agreement No. 696656, by COST-EU, Grant No. CA16218 and by Axa Research Fund. SEGAINVEX-UAM is also acknowledged. Work done in Ames Lab was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Science, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering. Ames Laboratory is operated for the U.S. Department of Energy by Iowa State University under Contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11358Project
Gobierno de España. FIS2014-54498-R; Gobierno de España. MDM-2014-0377; Gobierno de España. MAT2014-52405-C2-2-R; Comunidad de Madrid. S2013/MIT-2850/NANOFRONTMAG-CM; info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/679080/EU//PNICTEYES; info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/618321; info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/696656/EU//GrapheneCore1Editor's Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.97.014505Subjects
First order phase transitions; Microphase separation; Nematic order; Phase diagrams; Phase transitions; Phase transitions by order; Quantum criticality; Superconducting phase transition; Superconductivity; Vortices in superconductors; FísicaRights
© 2018 American Physical SocietyAbstract
We show that biaxial strain induces alternating tetragonal superconducting and orthorhombic nematic domains in Co-substituted CaFe2As2. We use atomic force, magnetic force, and scanning tunneling microscopy to identify the domains and characterize their properties, finding in particular that tetragonal superconducting domains are very elongated, more than several tens of micrometers long and about 30 nm wide; have the same Tc as unstrained samples; and hold vortices in a magnetic field. Thus, biaxial strain produces a phase-separated state, where each phase is equivalent to what is found on either side of the first-order phase transition between antiferromagnetic orthorhombic and superconducting tetragonal phases found in unstrained samples when changing Co concentration. Having such alternating superconducting domains separated by normal conducting domains with sizes of the order of the coherence length opens opportunities to build Josephson junction networks or vortex pinning arrays and suggests that first-order quantum phase transitions lead to nanometric-size phase separation under the influence of strain
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Google Scholar:Fente, Antón
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Correa-Orellana, Alexandre
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Böhmer, Anna E.
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Kreyssig, Andreas
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Ran, S.
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Bud'Ko, Sergey L.
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Canfield, Paul C.
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Mompean, Federico J.
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García-Hernández, Mar
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Munuera, Carmen
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Guillamón Gómez, Isabel
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Suderow Rodríguez, Hermann Jesús
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