The MIT research team studied the nematic transition of iron selenide, the highest-temperature iron-based superconductor, revealing a different mechanism for the shift to superconductivity compared to other materials.
Under certain conditions – usually exceedingly cold ones – This structural shift is known as a “nematic transition,” and physicists suspect that it offers a new way to drive materials into a superconducting state where electrons can flow entirely friction-free.
The physicists made their discovery studying iron selenide , a two-dimensional material that is the highest-temperature iron-based superconductor. The material is known to switch to a superconducting state at temperatures as high as 70 kelvins . Though still ultracold, this transition temperature is higher than that of most superconducting materials.
But the MIT team found that iron selenide shifts through an entirely new mechanism. Rather than undergoing a coordinated shift in spins, atoms in iron selenide undergo a collective shift in their orbital energy. It’s a fine distinction, but one that opens a new door to discovering unconventional superconductors.
In recent years, physicists have used nematicity to describe a coordinated shift that drives a material into a superconducting state. Strong interactions between electrons cause the material as a whole to stretch infinitesimally, like microscopic taffy, in one particular direction that allows electrons to flow freely in that direction. The big question has been what kind of interaction causes the stretching.
Using ultrabright X-rays, the team tracked how the atoms in each sample were moving, as well as how each atom’s electrons were behaving. After a certain point, they observed a definite, coordinated shift in the atoms’ orbitals. Atomic orbitals are essentially energy levels that an atom’s electrons can occupy. In iron selenide, electrons can occupy one of two orbital states around an iron atom. Normally, the choice of which state to occupy is random.
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