A disorder-enhanced quasi-one-dimensional superconductor.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27448209.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms12262 and PMC identifier 4961838.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
A powerful approach to analysing quantum systems with dimensionality d>1 involves adding a weak coupling to an array of one-dimensional (1D) chains. The resultant quasi-1D (q1D) systems can exhibit long-range order at low temperature, but are heavily influenced by interactions and disorder due to their large anisotropies. Real q1D materials are therefore ideal candidates not only to provoke, test and refine theories of strongly correlated matter, but also to search for unusual emergent electronic phases. Here we report the unprecedented enhancement of a superconducting instability by disorder in single crystals of Na2-δMo6Se6, a q1D superconductor comprising MoSe chains weakly coupled by Na atoms. We argue that disorder-enhanced Coulomb pair-breaking (which usually destroys superconductivity) may be averted due to a screened long-range Coulomb repulsion intrinsic to disordered q1D materials. Our results illustrate the capability of disorder to tune and induce new correlated electron physics in low-dimensional materials.