New Material
Researchers from Dresden and Mainz present a new multifunctional topological insulator material with combined superconductivity.
New material combines different, at first view contradicting properties with a high potential for future quantum electronics and computation
Most materials show one function, for example, a material can be a metal, a semiconductor, or an insulator. Metals such as copper are used as conducting wires with only low resistance and energy loss. Superconductors are metals which can conduct current even without any resistance, although only far below room temperature. Semiconductors, the foundation of current computer technology, show only low conduction of current, while insulators show no conductivity at all. Physicists have recently been excited about a new exotic type of materials, so-called topological insulators. A topological insulator is insulating inside the bulk like a normal insulator, while on the surface it shows conductivity like a metal. When a topological insulator is interfaced with a superconductor, a mysterious particle called Majorana fermion emerges, which can be used to fabricate a quantum computer that can run much more quickly than any current computer. Searching for Majorana fermions based on a topological insulator–superconductor interface has thus become a hot race just very recently.
Computer-based materials design has demonstrated its power in scientific research, saving resources and also accelerating the search for new materials for specific purposes. By employing state-of-art materials design methods, Dr. Binghai Yan and his collaborators from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have recently predicted that the oxide compound BaBiO3 combines two required properties, i.e., topological insulator and superconductivity. This material has been known for about thirty years as a high-temperature superconductor of Tc of nearly 30 Kelvin withp-type doping. Now it has been discovered to be also a topological insulator with n-type doping. A p-njunction type of simple device assisted by gating or electrolyte gating is proposed to realize Majorana fermions for quantum computation, which does not require a complex interface between two materials.
In addition to their options for use in quantum computers, topological insulators hold great potential applications in the emerging technology of spintronics and thermoelectrics for energy harvesting. One major obstacle for widespread application is the relatively small size of the bulk band gap, which is typically around 0.3 electron-volts (eV) for previously known topological insulator materials. Currently identified material exhibits a much larger energy-gap of 0.7 eV. Inside the energy-gap, metallic topological surface states exist with a Dirac-cone type of band structures.
The research leading to the recent publication in Nature Physics was performed by a team of researchers from Dresden and Mainz around the theoretical physicist Dr. Binghai Yan and the experimental chemists Professor Martin Jansen and Professor Claudia Felser. "Now we are trying to synthesize n-type doped BaBiO3," said Jansen. "And we hope to be soon able to realize our idea."
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Another honor for Claudia Felser
The Academy of Sciences and Literature (Mainz) elected Claudia Felser as a member of the mathematical and natural sciences class.
TUD Young Investigators
Dr. Eteri Svanidze and Dr. Uri Vool, research group leaders at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Dresden, were appointed TUD Young Investigators.
Congratulations to Büşra Mete: Best Poster Award at ECMetAC Days 2022
Best for Poster Award Büşra Mete at ECMetAC Days
ERC Starting Grant for Uri Vool
Uri Vool was awarded a starting grant from the European Research Council (ERC). He is an independent group leader at the MPI-CPfS, and will use the grant to explore novel superconductors by integrating them into hybrid quantum circuits.
GDCh Poster award for Chia-Chi Yu
IMPRS-CPQM student Chia-Chi Yu won a poster Prize at the 21st GDCh Conference on Inorganic Chemistry, Solid-State Chemistry, and Materials Research in Marburg (September 27-28, 2022).
Maia G. Vergniory
Maia G. Vergniory, a researcher in our department of Solid State Chemistry, has recently been elected as APS Fellow by the American Physical Society (APS) for her pioneering work developing a new theory known as Topological Quantum Chemistry that has allowed to identify thousands of new topological materials.
Changing direction: Research team discovers switchable electronic chirality in an achiral Kagome superconductor
A team of researchers from MPI for Chemical Physics of Solids and the MPI for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in collaboration with researchers from Switzerland and Spain has reported the first observation in a structurally achiral crystal, the Kagome superconductor CsV3Sb5. Their work has been published in the current issue of Nature.
Professor Séamus Davis awarded the Buckley Prize
We offer our warm congratulations to our Max Planck Fellow Professor J.C. Séamus Davis of the University of Oxford and University College Cork, who has been awarded the prestigious 2023 Oliver E. Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society.
"For Women in Science" award
Dr. Eteri Svanidze was honored with this year's award within the L'Oréal-UNESCO funding program "For Women in Science". We warmly congratulate Dr. Svanidze on this award.
The Superconductivity of Sr2RuO4 Under c-Axis Uniaxial Stress
A team of scientists from the MPI CPFS and Stockholm, Tsukuba, Oxford, Toronto, St Andrews and Birmingham combined focused ion beam microstructuring and uniaxial pressure to achieve a record value of uniaxial pressure for the unconventional superconductor Sr2RuO4 and found that the superconducting state of Sr2RuO4 evolved surprisingly.
Liebig Medal
Claudia Felser receives the Liebig Medal of the GDCh.
Ultra-high precision thermodynamics of unconventional superconductivity
Working with a new experimental technique called the ac elastocaloric effect, a team of scientists from Dresden, Karlsruhe, St Andrews, Cornell, Tsukuba and Stanford has mapped out the so-called phase diagram of the unconventional superconductor Sr2RuO4. The results narrow down the on-going, 25 years quest to understand the superconductivity of Sr2RuO4 and set a benchmark for future work.