Researcher from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids applied large hydrostatic pressures to tiny single crystals of CeFeAsO, a non-superconducting parent compound to iron-based superconductors, using diamond anvil pressure cells. By electrical, magnetic and structural measurements they showed that upon increasing the applied pressure, the material characteristics change from that of an iron-pnictide material to that of a heavy-fermion metal.

Surprisingly, a narrow superconducting phase emerges in the boundary region between the typical iron-pnictide spin-density-wave magnetism and a Ce-based Kondo-regime. This suggests that the two major phenomena characterizing iron-pnictides and heavy-fermions, spin-density-wave magnetism and the Kondo-effect, work together to produce superconductivity in CeFeAsO.

This work is published in Physical Review Letters and has been selected by the editors to be a PRL Editors' Suggestion.

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Journal Reference:

1. K. Mydeen, A. Jesche, K. Meier-Kirchner, U. Schwarz, C. Geibel, H. Rosner, M. Nicklas. Electron Doping of the Iron-Arsenide Superconductor CeFeAsO Controlled by Hydrostatic Pressure. Physical Review Letters, 2020; 125 (20) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.207001