Negligible oxygen vacancies, low critical current density, electric-field modulation, in-plane anisotropic and high-field transport of a superconducting Nd0.8Sr0.2NiO2/SrTiO3 heterostructure

TL;DR

This study investigates the transport properties of a Nd0.8Sr0.2NiO2/SrTiO3 heterostructure, revealing negligible oxygen vacancies, low critical current density, and anisotropic high-field behavior, with potential implications for Ni-based superconductors.

Contribution

It provides detailed experimental insights into the transport and magnetic properties of Nd0.8Sr0.2NiO2/SrTiO3 heterostructures, highlighting their anisotropic and high-field characteristics.

Findings

Negligible oxygen vacancies in SrTiO3 substrate.

Critical current density is approximately 4x10^3 A/cm2.

Upper critical field around 11.4 T and in-plane coherence length of 5.4 nm.

Abstract

The emerging Ni-based superconducting oxide thin films are rather intriguing to the entire condensed matter physics. Here we report some brief experimental results on transport measurements for a 14-nm-thick superconducting Nd0.8Sr0.2NiO2/SrTiO3 thin-film heterostructure with an onset transition temperature of ~9.5 K. Photoluminescence measurements reveal that there is negligible oxygen vacancy creation in the SrTiO3 substrate during thin-film deposition and post chemical reduction for the Nd0.8Sr0.2NiO2/SrTiO3 heterostructure. It was found that the critical current density of the Nd0.8Sr0.2NiO2/SrTiO3 thin-film heterostructure is relatively small, ~4x10^3 A/cm2. Although the surface steps of SrTiO3 substrates lead to an anisotropy for in-plane resistivity, the superconducting transition temperatures are almost the same. The out-of-plane magnetotransport measurements yield an upper critical field of ~11.4 T and an estimated in-plane Ginzburg-Landau coherence length of ~5.4 nm. High-field magnetotransport measurements up to 50 T reveal anisotropic critical fields at 1.8 K for three different measurement geometries and a complicated Hall effect. An electric field applied via the SrTiO3 substrate slightly varies the superconducting transition temperature. These experimental results could be useful for this rapidly developing field.