Emergent superconductivity in an iron-based honeycomb lattice initiated by pressure-driven spin-crossover.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 29765049.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-018-04326-1 and PMC identifier 5953925.
- 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
The discovery of iron-based superconductors (FeSCs), with the highest transition temperature (T<sub>c</sub>) up to 55 K, has attracted worldwide research efforts over the past ten years. So far, all these FeSCs structurally adopt FeSe-type layers with a square iron lattice and superconductivity can be generated by either chemical doping or external pressure. Herein, we report the observation of superconductivity in an iron-based honeycomb lattice via pressure-driven spin-crossover. Under compression, the layered FePX<sub>3</sub> (X = S, Se) simultaneously undergo large in-plane lattice collapses, abrupt spin-crossovers, and insulator-metal transitions. Superconductivity emerges in FePSe<sub>3</sub> along with the structural transition and vanishing of magnetic moment with a starting T<sub>c</sub> ~ 2.5 K at 9.0 GPa and the maximum T<sub>c</sub> ~ 5.5 K around 30 GPa. The discovery of superconductivity in iron-based honeycomb lattice provides a demonstration for the pursuit of transition-metal-based superconductors via pressure-driven spin-crossover.