Recently, Yonggang Wang from the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Peking University and collaborators published a research article in J. Am. Chem. Soc. titled "Superconductivity in Quasi One-Dimensional Ferromagnet CrSbSe3under High Pressure," reporting on the team's progress in pressure-induced bi-stable switching materials: the discovery of superconducting behavior in a Cr-based compound with quasi-one-dimensional structure under high pressure.
The research group has long focused on developing new high-pressure measurement technologies and exploring new pressure-responsive bi-stable switching materials, and has achieved some important results in functional materials such as spin, light, and electricity. For example, in-situ high-pressure photocurrent testing methods and multifunctional in-situ high-pressure Second-Harmonic-Generation (SHG) testing methods were established and developed. And for the first time, the structural and optoelectronic functional evolution of organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites was reported under pressure (J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2015, 137, 11144); The phenomenon of superconductivity induced by pressure-induced spin-crossover was discovered in a hexagonal iron lattice (Nat. Commun., 2018, 9, 1914); A pressure-induced p-n carrier-type switching was found in CuFeS2 chalcopyrite (J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2019, 141, 505); Realize pressure-induced SHG "strong-weak-none" three-state switching in BiOIO3 (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2022, 61, e2021116656), etc.
Since the discovery of superconductivity in metallic mercury in 1914, thousands of superconducting materials have been discovered. However, superconductors based on 3D transition metals Cr and Mn are very rare, mainly due to the strong magnetism and magnetic dissociation effects of Cr-based and Mn-based compounds. It was not until 2014 that the first Cr-based superconductor CrAs was discovered, mainly by applying external pressure to suppress its long-range magnetic ordering, and ultimately superconductivity was observed near the magnetic quantum critical point.
Figure 1. Superconducting phase diagram of CrSbSe3and Cr-based superconductor family.
CrSbSe3 is a ferromagnetic semiconductor with a quasi-one-dimensional chain structure under ambient pressure. The research team found that CrSbSe3 undergoes two consecutive equal structural phase transitions under high pressure, accompanied by volume collapse. The results of electrical transport measurements indicate that during the structural phase transition, CrSbSe3 undergoes semiconductor-to-semimetal and semimetal-to-metal transitions. While the sample exhibits metallicity, it begins to exhibit superconductivity. Combining high-pressure Raman spectroscopy characterization and first-principles calculations, the researchers found that CrSbSe3 achieved a maximum superconducting transition temperature of 7.7 K at 57.9 GPa thanks to phonon softening and enhanced p-d hybridization (Figure 1). This work expands the existing Cr-based superconducting family and provides a reference for the search for more low-dimensional van der Waals magnetic superconducting materials. This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility, and Huairou Comprehensive Extreme Conditions Experimental Facility.
Article Information:
C. Li, Y. Wang, K. Liu, D. Jiang, J. Feng, T. Wen, B. Yue, Y. Zhou, L. Sun,* Y. Wang,*
Superconductivity in Quasi-One-Dimensional Ferromagnet CrSbSe3under High Pressure.
J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2024,10.1021/jacs.3c13503.
