Study of artificial nickelates superlattices, isoelectronic with high-Tc cuprates
High-temperature superconductivity is one of most intensively studied phenomenon in solid state physics that still lacks a full theoretical description. Since the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity in copper oxides, scientists were searching also for superconductivity in related nickel oxides, without any positive report to date.
The progress in growing high-quality transition metal oxide heterostructures offers new routes to modify the electronic or magnetic structure by epitaxial strain, confinement, cation doping, and interfacial effects. Model calculations showed that superlattices composed of a rare-earth nickel oxide and a band-gap insulator potentially exhibit physics similar to the cuprates. This theoretical work has initiated a lot of research activity, however, superconductivity has not been found in any of the studied nickelate heterostructures so far.
We are offering a project on the preparation of superlattices based on oxygen-reduced LaNiO3-d and their subsequent investigation by X-ray diffraction, X-ray spectroscopy and electrical transport measurements.