Superconductivity in the antiperovskite Dirac-metal oxide Sr<sub>3-x</sub>SnO.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27941805.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms13617 and PMC identifier 5159807.
- 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
Investigations of perovskite oxides triggered by the discovery of high-temperature and unconventional superconductors have had crucial roles in stimulating and guiding the development of modern condensed-matter physics. Antiperovskite oxides are charge-inverted counterpart materials to perovskite oxides, with unusual negative ionic states of a constituent metal. No superconductivity was reported among the antiperovskite oxides so far. Here we present the first superconducting antiperovskite oxide Sr<sub>3-x</sub>SnO with the transition temperature of around 5 K. Sr<sub>3</sub>SnO possesses Dirac points in its electronic structure, and we propose from theoretical analysis a possibility of a topological odd-parity superconductivity analogous to the superfluid <sup>3</sup>He-B in moderately hole-doped Sr<sub>3-x</sub>SnO. We envision that this discovery of a new class of oxide superconductors will lead to a rapid progress in physics and chemistry of antiperovskite oxides consisting of unusual metallic anions.