In this review, we present a summary of the results on single crystal growth of two types of iron-chalcogenide superconductors, Fe(1+y)Te(1-x)Se(x) (11), and A(x)Fe(2-y)Se(2) (A= K, Rb, Cs, Tl, Tl/K, Tl/Rb), using Bridgman, zone-melting, vapor self-transport, and flux techniques. The superconducting and magnetic properties (the latter gained mainly from neutron scattering measurements) of these materials are reviewed to demonstrate the connection between magnetism and superconductivity. It will be shown that for the 11 system, while static magnetic order around the reciprocal lattice position (0.5, 0) competes with superconductivity, spin excitations centered around (0.5, 0.5) are closely coupled to the materials' superconductivity; this is made evident by the strong correlation between the spectral weight around (0.5, 0.5) and the superconducting volume fraction. The observation of a spin resonance below the superconducting temperature, Tc, and the magnetic-field dependence of the resonance, emphasize the important role spin excitations play in the superconductivity. Generally, these results illustrate the similarities between the iron-based and cuprate superconductors. In A(x)Fe(2-y)Se(2), superconductivity with Tc ~ 30 K borders an antiferromagnetic insulating phase; this is closer to the behavior observed in the cuprates but differs from that in other iron-based superconductors.
Fractional power-law behavior and its origin in iron-chalcogenide and ruthenate superconductors: Insights from first-principles calculations
我们进行现实的第一性原理计算的铁硫族化合物和铁基材料，以确定在这些系统中的洪德耦合诱导的相关性的实验签名。我们发现FeTe和KPDMATHABMM Fe $_{2-y}$ Se $_2$在它们的准粒子自能和光学电导率中显示出不寻常的轨道依赖分数幂律行为，这一现象首先在SrRuO $_3$中发现。这些材料的顺磁状态中的强不相干性导致电子状态隐藏在角度分辨光电子能谱中，其在低温下重新出现。我们确定了有效的低能量哈密顿描述这些系统，并表明这些异常是不控制的接近量子临界点，但从共存的快速量子力学轨道波动和慢自旋波动的结果。
Superconductivity mediated by the antiferromagnetic spin-wave in chalcogenide iron-base superconductors
K $_{0.8+x}$ Fe $_{1.6+y}$ Se $_2$等铁基硒化物超导体的基态都是掺杂反铁磁半导体。在这些材料中，存在定义明确的铁局域矩，其能量与传导电子的能量通过大的带隙分开。我们建议，该系统的低能物理是由一个模型的相互作用的电子与现场铁磁交换相互作用和站点间的超交换相互作用的哈密顿量。我们在线性自旋波近似下导出了电子的有效配对势，并证明了这些材料中的超导性可以通过介导相干自旋波激发来驱动。我们的工作为中子散射和其他实验观察到的超导和反铁磁长程序共存提供了一个自然的解释。
Layered thallium copper chalcogenides can form single, double, or triple layers of Cu-Ch separated by Tl sheets. Here we report on the preparation and properties of Tl-based materials of TlCu2Se2, TlCu4S3, TlCu4Se3 and TlCu6S4, and compare to reports on layered ACu2nChn+1 materials with A = Ba, K, Rb, and Cs, and Ch = S, Se. Having no long-range magnetism for these materials is quite surprising considering the possibilities of inter- and intra-layer exchange interactions through Cu 3d, and we measure by magnetic susceptibility and confirm by neutron diffraction. First principles density-functi…
Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy of Iron-Chalcogenide Superconductor Fe1.03Te0.7Se0.3 : Strong-Coupling Superconductivity and Universality of Inter-Band Scattering
By applying density functional theory calculations to iron chalcogenides, we find that magnetic order in Fe$_{1+y}$Te and magnetic instability at $(π,π)$ in K$_y$Fe$_2$Se$_2$ are controlled by interstitial and interlayer cations, respectively. While in Fe$_{1+y}$Te, magnetic phase transitions occur among collinear, exotic bicollinear and plaquette-ordered antiferronmagnetic states when the height of interstitial irons measured from iron plane or the concentration of interstitial irons is varied, the magnetic instability at $(π,π)$ which is believed to be responsible for the Cooper pairing in i…
The level of electronic correlation has been one of the key questions in understanding the nature of superconductivity. Among the iron-based superconductors, the iron chalcogenide family exhibits the strongest electron correlations. To gauge the correlation strength, we performed systematic angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy study on the iron chalcogenide series Fe$_{1+y}$Se$_x$Te$_{1-x}$ (0$<$x$<$0.59), a model system with the simplest structure. Our measurement reveals an incoherent to coherent crossover in the electronic structure as the selenium ratio increases and the system evolve…
The present article reviews recent experimental investigations of spin dynamics in iron-based superconductors and their parent compounds by means of inelastic neutron scattering. It mainly focuses on the most contemporary developments in this field, pertaining to the observations of magnetic resonant modes in new superconductors, spin anisotropy of low-energy magnetic fluctuations that has now been observed in a wide range of chemical compositions and doping levels, as well as their momentum-space anisotropy incurred by the spin-nematic order. The implications of these new findings for our und…
We perform a two-loop renormalization group (RG) analysis of a 2D effective multiband model, which is relevant for describing the low-energy properties of some iron-chalcogenide superconducting materials. Crucial ingredients in this analysis are the calculation of higher-order contributions in the RG scheme that go beyond the widely-used parquet approximation and the consequent inclusion of nontrivial self-energy effects of the model that yield an anisotropic renormalization of the quasiparticle weight in the system. The motivation of our work is the experimental discovery by Sprau et al. (201…
Impurity scattering is found to lead to quasi-one dimensional nanoscale modulation of the local density of states in the iron pnictides and chalcogenides. This `quasiparticle interference' feature is remarkably similar across a wide variety of pnictide and chalcogenide phases, suggesting a common origin. We show that a unified understanding of the experiments can be obtained by simply invoking a four-fold symmetry breaking $d_{xz}-d_{yz}$ orbital splitting, of a magnitude already suggested by the experiments. This can explain the one-dimensional characteristics in the local density of states o…
Measurement of Coherent Polarons in the Strongly Coupled Antiferromagnetically Ordered Iron-Chalcogenide Fe1.02Te using Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy
We employ a five-orbital tight-binding model to develop the mean field solution for various possible spin density wave states in the iron-chalcogenides. The quasiparticle interference (QPI) technique is applied to detect signatures of these states due to scatterings arising from non-magnetic impurities. Apart from the experimentally observed double striped structure with ordering vector $(π/2,π/2)$, the QPI method is investigated for the extended-stripe as well as the orthogonal double stripe phase. We discuss QPI as a possible tool to detect and classify various magnetic structures with diffe…
Coexistence of phases, characterized by different electronic degrees of freedom, commonly occurs in layered superconductors. Among them, alkaline intercalated chalcogenides are model systems showing microscale coexistence of paramagnetic (PAR) and antiferromagnetic (AFM) phases, however, temporal behavior of different phases is still unknown. Here, we report the first visualization of the atomic motion in the granular phase of K$_{x}$Fe$_{2-y}$Se$_2$ using X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy. Unlike the PAR phase, the AFM texture reveals an intermittent dynamics with avalanches as in martens…
Deviations of low-energy electronic structure of iron-based superconductors from density functional theory predictions have been parametrized in terms of band- and orbital-dependent mass renormalizations and energy shifts. The former have typically been described in terms of a local self-energy within the framework of dynamical mean field theory, while the latter appears to require non-local effects due to interband scattering. By calculating the renormalized bandstructure in both random phase approximation (RPA) and the two-particle self-consistent approximation (TPSC), we show that correlati…
The structural and electronic properties of hypothetical Ru$_x$Fe$_{1-x}$Se and Ru$_x$Fe$_{1-x}$Te systems have been investigated from first principles within the density functional theory (DFT). Reasonable values of lattice parameters and chalcogen atomic positions in the tetragonal unit cell of iron chalcogenides have been obtained with the use of norm-conserving pseudopotentials. The well known discrepancies between experimental data and DFT-calculated results for structural parameters of iron chalcogenides are related to the semicore atomic states which were frozen in the used here approac…
Common origin of the two types of magnetic fluctuations in iron chalcogenides
用中子非弹性散射方法研究了中等掺杂非超导Fe $_{1.01}$ Te $_{0.72}$ Se $_{0.28}$中的低能自旋激发.该体系中的自旋激发在a-b平面倒易晶格单元中包含（0.5，0，0）和（0.5，0.5，0）附近的分量（a=b=3.772 π和c=6.061 π）。在低能量下，散射集中在（0.5，0，0）附近。随着能量的增加，以（0.5，0，0）为中心的低能自旋激发的谱权突然向以（0.5，0.5，0）为中心的无公度自旋激发移动约3 meV。然而，这两种类型的自旋涨落表现出相同的温度依赖性。这些结果表明，（0.5，0，0）型自旋激发和（0.5，0.5，0）位置附近的无公度激发具有共同的起源，要理解铁硫族化合物中磁性和超导配对的本质，必须考虑这两种激发。
Structural, electronic properties and Fermi surface of ThCr2Si2-type tetragonal KFe2S2, KFe2Se2, and KFe2Te2 phases as parent systems of new ternary iron-chalcogenide superconductors
The improvement in the fabrication techniques of iron-based superconductors have made these materials real competitors of high temperature superconductors and MgB$_2$. In particular, iron-chalcogenides have proved to be the most promising for the realization of high current carrying tapes. But their use on a large scale cannot be achieved without the understanding of the current stability mechanisms in these compounds. Indeed, we have recently observed the presence of flux flow instabilities features in Fe(Se,Te) thin films grown on CaF$_2$. Here we present the results of current-voltage chara…
The complex interdigitated phases have greatly frustrated attempts to document the basic features of the superconductivity in the alkali metal intercalated iron chalcogenides. Here, using elastic neutron scattering, energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy, and resistivity measurements, we elucidate the relations of these phases in Rb$_{1-δ}$Fe$_y$Se$_{2-z}$S$_z$. We find: i) the iron content is crucial in stabilizing the stripe antiferromagnetic (AF) phase with rhombic iron vacancy order ($y\approx1.5$), the block AF phase with $\sqrt{5}\times \sqrt{5}$ iron vacancy order ($y\approx1.6$), and the…
An SDW antiferromagnetic (SDW-AF) low temperature phase transition is generally observe and the AF spin fluctuations are considered to play an important role for the superconductivity paring mechanism in FeAs superconductors. However, a similar magnetic phase transition is not observed in FeSe superconductors, which has caused considerable discussion. We report on the intrinsic electronic states of FeSe as elucidated by transport measurements under magnetic fields using a high quality single crystal. A mobility spectrum analysis, an ab initio method that does not make assumptions on the transp…
Drastic field-induced resistivity upturns as signatures of unconventional magnetism in superconducting iron chalcogenides
University of Oxford（牛津大学）；Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research（马克斯·普朗克固体研究所）；Institute of High-Pressure Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences（波兰科学院高压物理研究所）；Institute for Quantum Materials and Technologies, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology（卡尔斯鲁厄理工学院量子材料与技术研究所）
The symmetries of superconducting gap functions remain an important question of iron-based superconductivity. Motivated by the recent angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopic measurements on iron-chalcogenide superconductors, we investigate the influence of pairing symmetries on the topological surface state. If the surface Dirac cone becomes gapped in the superconducting phase, it implies magnetization induced from time-reversal symmetry breaking pairing via spin-orbit coupling. Based on the crystalline symmetry constraints on the Ginzburg-Landau free energy, the gap function symmetries are…
The 122$^{*}$ series of iron-chalcogenide superconductors, for example K$_x$Fe$_{2-y}$Se$_{2}$, only possesses electron Fermi pockets. Their distinctive electronic structure challenges the picture built upon iron pnictide superconductors, where both electron and hole Fermi pockets coexist. However, partly due to the intrinsic phase separation in this family of compounds, many aspects of their behavior remain elusive. In particular, the evolution of the 122$^{*}$ series of iron-chalcogenides with chemical substitution still lacks a microscopic and unified interpretation. Using angle-resolved ph…
Structural, Magnetic and Electronic Properties of the Iron-Chalcogenide A$_x$Fe$_{2-y}$Se$_2$ (A=K, Cs, Rb, Tl and etc.) Superconductors
本文报道了一种新的铁硫系超导体A $_x$ Fe $_{2-y}$ Se $_2$（A=K，Cs，Rb，Tl等）的发现。铁基超导体具有许多独特的性质，如母体化合物可能的绝缘状态、铁空位的存在及其有序性、一种新的磁结构及其与超导电性的相互作用，以及不同于其它铁基超导体的特殊电子结构等，引起了人们的广泛关注。本文对这种新型超导体的结构、磁性和电子学性质作了简要的评述，重点讨论了它的电子结构和超导能隙。在论文的最后讨论了问题和未来前景。
We demonstrate that the differential conductance, $dI/dV$, measured via spectroscopic imaging scanning tunneling microscopy in the doped iron chalcogenide FeSe$_{0.45}$Te$_{0.55}$, possesses a series of characteristic features that allow one to extract the orbital structure of the superconducting gaps. This yields nearly isotropic superconducting gaps on the two hole-like Fermi surfaces, and a strongly anisotropic gap on the electron-like Fermi surface. Moreover, we show that the pinning of nematic fluctuations by defects can give rise to a dumbbell-like spatial structure of the induced impuri…
Superconductivity develops in metals upon the formation of a coherent macroscopic quantum state of electron pairs. Iron pnictides and chalcogenides are materials that have high superconducting transition temperatures. In this Review, we describe the advances in the field that have led to higher superconducting transition temperatures in iron-based superconductors and the wide range of materials that form them. We summarize both the essential aspects of the normal state and the mechanism for superconductivity. We emphasize the degree of electron-electron correlations and their manifestation in …
The discovery of superconductivity in alkali-ammonia co-intercalated FeSe has generated intensive interest because of their highest Tc (~ 45 K) among iron-chalcogenide superconductors with bulk form. Here, we report the phase diagrams of two series of Li/Na-ammonia co-intercalated FeSe1-zTez. When superconductivity is suppressed by Te doping, the magnetic ordering states are emergent. Moreover, a novel phase Lix(NH3)yFe2-δTe2 with possible antiferromagnetism is discovered. This strongly indicates the intimate relation between superconductivity and magnetism in these materials, like in other ir…
The successful fabrication of one monolayer FeSe on SrTiO$_{3}$ represented a real breakthrough in searching for high-T$_{c}$ Fe-based superconductors (Ref. 1). Motivated by this important discovery, we studied the effects of tensile strain on one monolayer and bulk iron-chalcogenide superconductors (FeSe and FeTe), showing that it produces important magnetic and electronic changes in the systems. We found that the magnetic ground state of bulk and monolayer FeSe is the block-checkerboard phase, which turns into the collinear stripe phase under in plane tensile strain. FeTe, in both bulk and m…
There is increasing recognition that the multiorbital nature of the 3d electrons is important to the proper description of the electronic states in the normal state of the iron-based superconductors. Earlier studies of the pertinent multiorbital Hubbard models identified an orbital-selective Mott phase, which anchors the orbital-selective behavior seen in the overall phase diagram. An important characteristics of the models is that the orbitals are kinetically coupled -- i.e. hybridized -- to each other, which makes the orbital-selective Mott phase especially nontrivial. A U(1) slave-spin meth…
The iron chalcogenides FeSe and FeS are superconductors composed of two-dimensional sheets held together by van der Waals interactions, which makes them prime candidates for the intercalation of various guest species. We review the intercalation chemistry of FeSe and FeS superconductors and discuss their synthesis, structure, and physical properties. Before we review the latest work in this area, we provide a brief background on the intercalation chemistry of other inorganic materials that exhibit enhanced superconducting properties upon intercalation, which include the transition metal dichal…
