MSE Seminar Series: Synthesis of Superconducting Square Planar Nickelates

Speaker

Julia Mundy, Assistant Professor of Physics, Harvard University

Abstract

Since the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity in copper oxide materials, there have been sustained efforts to both understand the origins of this phase and discover new cuprate-like superconducting materials. One prime materials platform has been the rare-earth nickelates; indeed, superconductivity was recently discovered in the doped compound Nd0.8Sr0.2NiO2. Undoped NdNiO2 belongs to a series of layered square-planar nickelates with chemical formula Ndn+1NinO2n+2 and is known as the ‘infinite-layer’ (n = ∞) nickelate. Using atomically-precise molecular-beam epitaxy, our work reports the first synthesis of this series of compounds. We observe a superconducting transition beginning at ~13 K in the optimally doped 5-layer Nd6Ni5O12 . I will also discuss our work further engineering superconductivity in this family with a combination of chemical doping, epitaxial strain, and dimensionality.

Biography

Julia Mundy is an experimental condensed matter physicist. Her research combines thin film deposition with advanced characterization techniques to design, synthesize and probe novel quantum materials at the atomic-scale.