Reemergence of high-Tc superconductivity in the (Li1-xFex)OHFe1-ySe under high pressure

TL;DR

This study reveals that applying high pressure to (Li1-xFex)OHFe1-ySe induces a second high-Tc superconducting phase above 5 GPa, characterized by increased Tc and a transition from Fermi liquid to non-Fermi-liquid behavior, likely due to Fermi surface reconstruction.

Contribution

It provides detailed high-pressure magnetotransport data on (Li1-xFex)OHFe1-ySe, demonstrating the emergence of a higher Tc phase and linking it to electronic changes rather than structural transitions.

Findings

High Tc (~50 K) reemerges above 5 GPa.

Normal state transitions from Fermi liquid to non-Fermi-liquid.

Carrier density increases with pressure.

Abstract

The pressure-induced reemergence of the second high-Tc superconducting phase (SC-II) in the alkali-metal intercalated AxFe2-ySe2 (A = K, Rb, Cs, Tl) remains an enigma and proper characterizations on the superconducting- and normal-state properties of the SC-II phase were hampered by the intrinsic inhomogeneity and phase separation. To elucidate this intriguing problem, we performed a detailed high-pressure magnetotransport study on the recently discovered (Li1-xFex)OHFe1-ySe single crystals, which have high Tc~40 K and share similar Fermi surface topology as AxFe2-ySe2, but are free from the sample complications. We found that the ambient-pressure Tc~41 K is suppressed gradually to below 2 K upon increasing pressure to Pc ~5 GPa, above which a SC-II phase with higher Tc emerges and the Tc increases progressively to above 50 K up to 12.5 GPa. Interestingly, our high-precision resistivity data enable us to uncover the sharp transition of the normal state from a Fermi liquid for SC-I phase (0 < P < 5 GPa) to a non-Fermi-liquid for SC-II phase (P > 5GPa). In addition, the reemergence of high-Tc SC-II phase is found to accompany with a concurrent enhancement of electron carrier density. Since high-pressure structural study based on the synchrotron X-ray diffraction rules out the structural transition below 10 GPa, the observed SC-II phase with enhanced carrier density should be ascribed to an electronic origin associated with a pressure-induced Fermi surface reconstruction.