Superconductivity in nickelate heterostructures

Nickel and copper are nominally very similar in chemistry so the search for superconductivity in nickelates is a story almost as old as the quest to understand the high temperature superconductivity of the cuprates. A central feature of these efforts was to find a nickelate with a similar electronic structure to that of the cuprates and a significant part of this approach utilized thin filmsand heterostructures.

In this seminar I will describe some of the most important advances made in the search for superconductivity in nickelates.

First, I will discuss the efforts made in the context of perovskite nickelate heterostructures and then I will introduce the recent discovery of superconductivity in infinite-layer nickelates[1] and the ever-growingfamily of nickelate superconductors.

Finally, I will come back to the comparison between nickelates and cuprates by examining what we have learned so far on the physics of the nickelates. In particular I will focus on results from x-ray scattering [2] and muon spin rotation [3] that suggest acoexistence of superconductivity and magnetism thatmay be as a result oftheproposed multi-orbital natureof the nickelates.

Speaker: Jennifer Fowlie, Stanford University

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