PNAS Plus: From antiferromagnetic insulator to correlated metal in pressurized and doped LaMnPO
Abstract
Widespread adoption of superconducting technologies awaits the discovery of new materials with enhanced properties, especially higher superconducting transition temperatures Tc. The unexpected discovery of high Tc superconductivity in cuprates suggests that the highest Tcs occur when pressure or doping transform the localized and moment-bearing electrons in antiferromagnetic insulators into itinerant carriers in a metal, where magnetism is preserved in the form of strong correlations. The absence of this transition in Fe-based superconductors may limit their Tcs, but even larger Tcs may be possible in their isostructural Mn analogs, which are antiferromagnetic insulators like the cuprates. It is generally believed that prohibitively large pressures would be required to suppress the effects of the strong Hund's rule coupling in these Mn-based compounds, collapsing the insulating gap and enabling superconductivity. Indeed, no Mn-based compounds are known to be superconductors. The electronic structure calculations and X-ray diffraction measurements presented here challenge these long held beliefs, finding that only modest pressures are required to transform LaMnPO, isostructural to superconducting host LaFeAsO, from an antiferromagnetic insulator to a metallic antiferromagnet, where the Mn moment vanishes in a second pressure-driven transition. Proximity to these charge and moment delocalization transitions in LaMnPO results in a highly correlated metallic state, the familiar breeding ground of superconductivity.
- Publication:
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
- Pub Date:
- July 2012
- DOI:
- 10.1073/pnas.1117366109
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1110.5938
- Bibcode:
- 2012PNAS..109E1815S
- Keywords:
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- Condensed Matter - Strongly Correlated Electrons
- E-Print:
- 5 pages, 5 figures