Tuning the ground state of cuprate high-critical-temperature superconducting thin films by nanofaceted substrates

2023/06/21 by Mirarchi, G., Arpaia, R., Wahlberg, E. +7
#FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) #Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2306.12335

Abstract

Anisotropic transport properties have been assessed in a number of cuprate superconductors, providing evidence for a nematic state. Here, we analyze recent experimental data for ultrathin YBa₂Cu₃O_7-x (YBCO) films, where nematicity is induced via strain engineering, leading to a suppression of charge density wave scattering along the orthorhombic a-axis and a concomitant enhancement of strange metal behavior along the b-axis. It is shown that the anisotropic properties strongly depend on the substrate, which we characterize by atomic force microscopy (AFM). Based on the AFM data, we provide a microscopic model that can account for the absence (presence) of nematicity and the resulting transport properties in films grown on SrTiO₃ (MgO) substrates.

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