Roland Hott, Reinhold Kleiner, Thomas Wolf, Gertrud Zwicknagl
备注：
A previous version of this article has been published in \" Applied Superconductivity: Handbook on Devices and Applications \", Wiley-VCH ISBN: 978-3-527-41209-9. The new extended and updated version will be published in \" Encyclopedia of Applied Physics \", Wiley-VCH
Short review of the topical comprehension of the superconductor materials classes Cuprate High-Temperature Superconductors, other oxide superconductors, Iron-based Superconductors, Heavy-Fermion Superconductors, Nitride Superconductors, Organic and other Carbon-based Superconductors and Boride and Borocarbide Superconductors, featuring their present theoretical understanding and their aspects with respect to technical applications.
Candidates for new thermoelectric and superconducting materials, which have narrow band gap and flat bands near band edges, were searched by the high-throughput first-principles calculation from an inorganic materials database. The synthesized SnBi$_2$Se$_4$ among the target compounds showed a narrow band gap of 354 meV, and a thermal conductivity of 1 W/Km at ambient pressure. The sample SnBi$_2$Se$_4$ showed a metal-insulator transition at 11.1 GPa, as predicted by a theoretical estimation. Furthermore, the two pressure-induced superconducting transitions were discovered at under 20.2 GPa an…
Low-temperature properties of a crystal containing superconducting inclusions of two different materials have been studied. In the approximation that the size of inclusions is much smaller than the coherence length/penetration depth of the magnetic field the theory for magnetoresistance of a crystal containing spherical superconducting inclusions of two different materials has been developed, and magnetization of crystals has been calculated.
The review is focused on one of the most exotic families of iron-based superconductors belonging to the AFeAs structural type, where A is alkali metal. We briefly concern physical and electron properties of the typical members of this family, LiFeAs and NaFeAs, discuss the theoretical models describing the multiple-gap superconducting state, and the experimental data available in literature. As well, we specify the main unsolved problems, that seem crucial for both the AFeAs family and for iron-based superconductors in general.
An introduction to and overview of the contents of this Special Issue are given. 32 classes of superconducting materials are discussed, grouped under the three categories "conventional", "possibly unconventional" and "unconventional" according to the mechanism believed to give rise to superconductivity.
We review some recent advances in studies of phase-coherent thermoelectric effects in superconducting hybrid structures such as, e.g., Andreev interferometers. We elucidate a number of mechanisms of electron-hole symmetry breaking in such systems causing dramatic enhancement of thermoelectric effects. We demonstrate that the flux-dependent thermopower exhibits periodic dependence on the applied magnetic flux $Φ_x$ which in some limits may reduce to either odd or even functions of $Φ_x$ in accordance with experimental observations. We also show that dc Josephson current in Andreev interferomete…
This paper reviews the highlights of a 4-years-long research project supported by the Japanese Government to explore new superconducting materials and relevant functional materials. The project found several tens of new superconductors by examining ~1000 materials, each of which was chosen by Japanese team member experts with a background in solid state chemistry. This review summarizes the major achievements of the project in newly found superconducting materials, and the wire and tape fabrication of iron-based superconductors. It is a unique feature of this review to incorporate a list of ~7…
We review electronic transport in superconducting junctions with Sr$_2$RuO$_4$. Transport measurements provide evidence for chiral domain walls and, therefore, chiral superconductivity in superconducting Sr$_2$RuO$_4$, but so far, the symmetry of the underlying superconducting state remains inconclusive. Further studies involving density of states measurements and spin-polarised transport in local/non--local Sr$_2$RuO$_4$ junctions with magnetic materials could lead to fundamental discoveries and a better understanding of the superconducting state.
Superconducting materials hold great potential to bring radical changes for electric power and high-field magnet technology , enabling high-efficiency electric power generation, high-capacity lossless electric power transmission, small light-weighted electrical equipment, high-speed maglev transportation, ultra-strong magnetic field generation for high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) systems, the future advanced high energy particle accelerators, nuclear fusion reactors and so on. The performance, economy and operating parameters (temperatu…
Old susceptibility data, measured in superconducting materials at low-frequency, are shown to be accounted for consistently within the framework of a recently published\cite{sz1} analysis of the skin effect. Their main merit is to emphasize the significance of the skin-depth measurements, performed \textit{just beneath} the critical temperature $T_c$, in order to disprove an assumption, which thwarted any understanding of the skin-depth data, achieved so far by conventional high-frequency methods, so that those data might, from now on, give access to the temperature dependence of the concentra…
Ted Geballe has contributed enormously to the knowledge of superconducting materials during an illustrious scientific career spanning seven decades, encompassing groundbreaking discoveries and studies of both so-called conventional and unconventional superconductors. On the year of his 100th birthday I would like to argue that all superconducting materials that Ted investigated, as well as those he did not, have one thing in common that is not generally recognized: hole carriers. This includes $PbTe$ doped with $Tl$, for which Ted has proposed that superconductivity is driven by negative-U pai…
We present materials informatics approach to search for superconducting hydrogen compounds, which is based on a genetic algorithm and a genetic programming. This method consists of four stages: (i) search for stable crystal structures of materials by a genetic algorithm, (ii) collection of physical and chemical property data by first-principles calculations, (iii) development of superconductivity predictor based on the database by a genetic programming, and (iv) discovery of potential candidates by regression analysis. By repeatedly performing the process as (i) $\rightarrow$ (ii) $\rightarrow…
Spin resonance in the superconducting state of Fe-based materials within the multiorbital model with unequal anisotropic gaps on different Fermi surface sheets is studied. On the basis of the model gap function and the one calculated within the spin fluctuation theory of pairing, I show that the resonance peak shifts to higher frequencies with increasing the zero-amplitude gap magnitude. On the contrary, with increasing the gap anisotropy, it shifts to lower frequencies and lose some intensity.
The skin effect is analyzed to provide the numerous measurements of the penetration depth of the electromagnetic field in superconducting materials with a theoretical basis. Both the normal and anomalous skin effects are accounted for within a single framework. The emphasis is laid on the conditions required for the penetration depth to be equal to London's length, which enables us to validate an assumption widely used in the interpretation of all current experimental results.
The critical current density Jc in type-II conventional and high-Tc superconducting bulk materials is investigated based on the quantum theory for the vortex dynamics. It is shown that for a constant magnetic field, the critical current density Jc decreases weakly with increasing temperature when T<T_dp(depinning temperature); when T_dp< T <T_f (boundary fluctuation temperature,Jc is power-law-decaying,and when T>T_f,Jc decays exponentially; while for a constant temperature, Jc first decreases, then increases after reaching a maximum, and finally decreases again as the magnetic field increases…
Recently, the search for Majorana fermions (MFs) has become one of the most important and exciting issues in condensed matter physics since such an exotic quasiparticle is expected to potentially give rise to unprecedented quantum phenomena whose functional properties will be used to develop future quantum technology. Theoretically, the MFs may reside in various types of topological superconductor materials that is characterized by the topologically protected gapless surface state which are essentially an Andreev bound state. Superconducting doped topological insulators and topological crystal…
Giant vortices with higher phase-winding than $2π$ are usually energetically unfavorable, but geometric symmetry constraints on a superconductor in a magnetic field are known to stabilize such objects. Here, we show via microscopic calculations that giant vortices can appear in intrinsically non-superconducting materials, even without any applied magnetic field. The enabling mechanism is the proximity effect to a host superconductor where a current flows, and we also demonstrate that antivortices can appear in this setup. Our results open the possibility to study electrically controllable topo…
We investigated the material parameters of several single-layer cuprates, including those with fluorinated buffer layers, with the aim of identifying possible high-temperature superconductors. To evaluate the material parameters, we use the Wannierization techniques and the constrained random phase approximation. The obtained single-band Hubbard models are studied using the fluctuation-exchange approximation. Comparison among several cuprates reveals unknown high-$T_{\text{c}}$ superconductors. In, Ga, Al, and Cd compounds in particular show the potential to exhibit higher-$T_{\text{c}}$ super…
In non-centrosymmetric superconductors, where the crystal structure lacks a centre of inversion, parity is no longer a good quantum number and an electronic antisymmetric spin-orbit coupling (ASOC) is allowed to exist by symmetry. If this ASOC is sufficiently large, it has profound consequences on the superconducting state. For example, it generally leads to a superconducting pairing state which is a mixture of spin-singlet and spin-triplet components. The possibility of such novel pairing states, as well as the potential for observing a variety of unusual behaviours, led to intensive theoreti…
SmFeAsO1-xFx tapes were prepared using three kinds of starting materials. It shows that the starting materials have an obvious effect on the impurity phases in final superconducting tapes. Compared with the other samples, the samples fabricated by SmAs, FeO, Fe2As, and SmF3 have the smallest arsenide impurity phase and voids. As a result, these samples possess much denser structure and better grain connectivity. Moreover, among the three kinds of samples fabricated in this work, this kind of sample has the highest zero-resistivity temperature ~40 K and largest critical current density ~4600 A/…
A localized measurement of the RF critical field on superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavity materials is a key step to identify specific defects that produce quenches of SRF cavities. Two new measurements are performed to demonstrate these capabilities with a novel near-field scanning probe microwave microscope. The first is a third harmonic nonlinear measurement on a high Residual- Resistance-Ratio bulk Nb sample showing strong localized nonlinear response for the first time, with surface RF magnetic field $B_{surface} \sim 10^{2}$ $mT$. The second is a raster scanned harmonic response i…
Thermo-electric transport at the nano-scale is a rapidly developing topic, in particular in superconductor-based hybrid devices. In this review paper, we first discuss the fundamental principles of electronic cooling in mesoscopic superconducting hybrid structures, the related limitations and applications. We review recent work performed in Grenoble on the effects of Andreev reflection, photonic heat transport, phonon cooling, as well as on an innovative fabrication technique for powerful coolers.
The electronic structures of the ground state for several different superconducting materials, such as cuprates, conventional 3-dimensional superconductors, doped semiconductors and low-dimensional systems, are quite different and sometimes in contrast to what is supposed to make a superconductor. Properties like the Fermi-surface (FS) topology, density-of-states (DOS), stripes, electron-phonon coupling ($λ_{ep}$) and spin fluctuations ($λ_{sf}$) are analyzed in order to find clues to what might be important for the mechanism of superconductivity. A high DOS at $E_F$ is important for standard …
The Z = 12.67 family of materials includes CaBeSi and NaAlSi which have been reported as non-superconducting and superconducting respectively. We show with an algorithm how to generate other members of this family. We discover through the material specific characterization dataset (MSCD) scheme and the symmetry conditions for superconductivity, why some are superconducting and others may not be superconducting.We estimate too the Tcs of members of this interesting family of materials.
The state-of-the-art technology of X-ray microcalorimeters based on superconducting transition edge sensors (TESs), for applications in astrophysics and particle physics, is reviewed. We will show the advance in understanding the detector physics and describe the recent breakthroughs in the TES design that are opening the way towards the fabrication and the read-out of very large arrays of pixels with unprecedented energy resolution. The most challenging low temperature instruments for space- and ground-base experiments will be described.
Vortex dynamics is strongly connected with the mechanisms responsible for the photon detection of superconducting devices. Indeed, the local suppression of superconductivity by photon absorption may trigger vortex nucleation and motion effects, which can make the superconducting state unstable. In addition, scaling down the thickness of the superconducting films and/or the width of the bridge geometry can strongly influence the transport properties of superconducting films, e.g. affecting its critical current as well as its switching current into the normal state. Understanding such instabilit…
We review all symmetry-allowed spin-singlet and spin-triplet superconducting (SC) order parameters in graphene ($s$-wave, $d$-wave, $p$-wave, and $f$-wave) generated by generic onsite, nearest-neighbor (NN), and next-to-nearest-neighbor (NNN) pairing interactions in a tight-binding model. For each pairing channel, we calculate both the band structure and the dependence of the density of states on energy, chemical potential, and on the pairing strength. In particular, we distinguish between nodal superconducting states and fully gapped states and study the dependence of gap closing points on th…
We find that singlet superconducting pairing can lead to Majorana fermions in three dimensional Dirac superconductors (3DDS) if the pairing order parameter is a pseudo-scalar, i.e. it changes sign under mirror reflection. The pseudo-scalar superconducting order parameter, $Δ_5$ can close and reopen the spectral gap caused by the scalar Dirac mass $m$ in a three-dimensional Dirac material (3DDM), giving rise to a two-dimensional Majorana sea (2DMS) at the plane of the gap kink. By bringing the Hamiltonian into a canonical form which then gives the winding number, we show that this system belong…
The application of superconducting materials is becoming more and more widespread. Traditionally, the discovery of new superconducting materials relies on the experience of experts and a large number of "trial and error" experiments, which not only increases the cost of experiments but also prolongs the period of discovering new superconducting materials. In recent years, machine learning has been increasingly applied to materials science. Based on this, this manuscript proposes the use of XGBoost model to identify superconductors; the first application of deep forest model to predict the crit…
We study the interplay of the ferromagnetic (FM) state and the p-wave superconducting (SC) state observed in several materials such as UCoGe and URhGe in a totally nonperturbative manner. To this end, we introduce a lattice Ginzburg-Landau model that is a genuine generalization of the phenomenological Ginzburg-Landau theory proposed previously in the continuum and also a counterpart of the lattice gauge-Higgs model for the s-wave SC transition, and study it numerically by Monte-Carlo simulations. The obtained phase diagram has qualitatively the same structure as that of UCoGe in the region whe…
The family of multi-layered superconductors derived from the doped topological insulator Bi$_2$Se$_3$ has been found to be unusually robust against non-magnetic disorder. Recent experimental studies have highlighted the fact that the location of impurities could play a critical role for this puzzling robustness. Here we investigate the effects of four different types of impurities, on-site, interstitial, intercalated and polar, on the superconducting critical temperature. We find that different components of the scattering potential are active depending on the impurity configuration and choice…
Chiral Majorana hinge modes are characteristic of a second-order topological superconductor in three dimensions. Here we systematically study pairing symmetry in the point group D_{2h}, and find that the leading pairing channels can be of s-, d-, and s+id-wave pairing in Dirac materials. Except for the odd-parity s-wave pairing superconductivity, the s+id-wave pairing superconductor is topologically nontrivial and possesses Majorana hinge and surface modes. The chiral Majorana hinge modes can be characterized by a winding number of the quadrupole moment, or quantized quadruple moment at the sy…
After an initial transient period, the conduction regime in a 1D superconducting wire that carries a fixed current is either normal or periodic or stationary. The phase diagram for these possibilities was studied in Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 99}, 167003 (2007) for particular values of the length and the material parameters. We have extended this study to arbitrary length and to a range of material parameters that includes realistic values. Variation of the length leads to scaling laws for the phase diagram. Variation of the material parameters leads to new qualitative features and new phases, incl…
In this paper, we present results on magnetization properties of boron nitride-carbon (BN-C) and boron carbide-carbon (B4C-C) granular mixtures. The temperature-dependent magnetization for field-cooled during cooling and field-cooled during warming shows a kind of thermal hysteresis that is always seen around a metamagnetic phase transition from an antiferromagnetic martensite to a ferromagnetic austenite phase. The low-temperature magnetization has an upward turn that can be attributed to superparamagnetism, diamagnetic shielding, and trapped flux characteristic to high-temperature supercondu…
We review progress at UCSB on understanding the physics of decoherence in superconducting qubits. Although many decoherence mechanisms were studied and fixed in the last 5 years, the most important ones are two-level state defects in amorphous dielectrics, non-equilibrium quasiparticles generated from stray infrared light, and radiation to slotline modes. With improved design, the performance of integrated circuit transmons using the Xmon design are now close to world record performance: these devices have the advantage of retaining coherence when scaled up to 9 qubits.
In the course of seeking the microscopic mechanism of superconductivity in cuprate high temperature superconductors, the pseudogap phase\textemdash the very abnormal 'normal' state on the hole-doped side\textemdash has proven to be as big of a quandary as superconductivity itself. Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) is a powerful tool for assessing the momentum-dependent phenomenology of the pseudogap, and recent technological developments have permitted a more detailed understanding. This report reviews recent progress in understanding the relationship between superconductivity …
We perform first principles band calculation of the newly discovered superconductor LaO$_{1-x}$F$_x$BiS$_2$, and study the lattice structure and the fluorine doping dependence of the gap between the valence and conduction bands. We find that the distance between La and S as well as the fluorine doping significantly affects the band gap. On the other hand, the four orbital model of the BiS$_2$ layer shows that the lattice structure does not affect this portion of the band. Still, the band gap can affect the carrier concentration in the case of light electron doping, which in turn should affect …
DFT simulation based ab-initio approach has been executed for investigating the comparative study of the physical properties of superconducting disilicide materials YT$_2$Si$_2$ (T= Co, Ni, Ru, Rh, Pd, Ir). This is the first comparative theoretical investigation of these materials, which is done through Cambridge Serial Total Energy Package module.
At this centenary of the discovery of superconductivity, the design of new and more useful superconductors remains as enigmatic as ever. These materials play crucial roles both for fundamental science and applications, and they hold great promise in addressing our global energy challenge. The recent discovery of a new class of high-temperature superconductors has made the community more enthusiastic than ever about finding new superconductors. Historically, these discoveries were almost completely guided by serendipity, and now, researchers in the field have grown into an enthusiastic global n…
