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Electric field-induced superconducting transition of insulating FeSe thin film at 35 K

Kota Hanzawa,Hikaru Sato,H. Hiramatsu,T. Kamiya,H. Hosono

Published 2015 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

ABSTRACT

Significance One of the key strategies for obtaining higher superconducting critical temperature (Tc) is to dope carriers into an insulator parent material with strong electron correlation. Here, we examined electrostatic carrier doping to insulator-like thin (∼10-nm-thick) FeSe epitaxial films using an electric double-layer transistor (EDLT) structure. The maximum Tc obtained is 35 K, which is 4× higher than that of bulk FeSe. This result demonstrates that EDLTs are useful tools to explore the ultimate Tc for insulating parent materials, and opens a way to explore high-Tc superconductivity, where carrier doping is difficult by conventional chemical substitution. It is thought that strong electron correlation in an insulating parent phase would enhance a critical temperature (Tc) of superconductivity in a doped phase via enhancement of the binding energy of a Cooper pair as known in high-Tc cuprates. To induce a superconductor transition in an insulating phase, injection of a high density of carriers is needed (e.g., by impurity doping). An electric double-layer transistor (EDLT) with an ionic liquid gate insulator enables such a field-induced transition to be investigated and is expected to result in a high Tc because it is free from deterioration in structure and carrier transport that are in general caused by conventional carrier doping (e.g., chemical substitution). Here, for insulating epitaxial thin films (∼10 nm thick) of FeSe, we report a high Tc of 35 K, which is 4× higher than that of bulk FeSe, using an EDLT under application of a gate bias of +5.5 V. Hall effect measurements under the gate bias suggest that highly accumulated electron carrier in the channel, whose area density is estimated to be 1.4 × 1015 cm–2 (the average volume density of 1.7 × 1021 cm–3), is the origin of the high-Tc superconductivity. This result demonstrates that EDLTs are useful tools to explore the ultimate Tc for insulating parent materials.

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