Glassy atomic vibrations and blurry electronic structures created by local structural disorders in high-entropy metal telluride superconductors

TL;DR

This study reveals that high-entropy metal tellurides exhibit glassy atomic vibrations and blurry electronic structures due to local disorder, which correlates with their pressure-robust superconductivity, challenging conventional electron-phonon theories.

Contribution

It demonstrates the link between local structural disorder, glassy vibrational and electronic states, and pressure-robust superconductivity in high-entropy tellurides, introducing new insights into their pairing mechanisms.

Findings

Increased atomic disorder correlates with glassy vibrational states.

Blurry electronic structures emerge with higher configurational entropy.

Superconductivity robustness is linked to glassy phonon and electronic states.

Abstract

The motivation of this work is our recent observation of the robustness of superconductivity in a High-entropy (HE) superconductor Ag0.2In0.2Sn0.2Pb0.2Bi0.2Te (CsCl-type) to external pressure. The superconducting transition temperature (Tc) of Ag0.2In0.2Sn0.2Pb0.2Bi0.2Te is almost constant with pressure, described as robustness of superconductivity to pressure, whereas the PbTe with zero configurational entropy of mixing exhibits a clear decrease in Tc with pressure. Here, we investigated the atomic displacement parameters (Uiso), the atomic-vibration characteristics, and the electronic states of metal tellurides (MTe) with various configurational entropy of mixing (DSmix) at the M site. The Uiso for the M site is clearly increased by M-site alloying with DSmix > 1.1R, which is the evidence of local disorder introduced by the increase in DSmix via the solution of three or more M elements. The revealed vibrational density of states (DOS) shows a remarkable broadening with DSmix > 1.1R, which indicates glassy characteristics of atomic vibration in HE MTe with a NaCl-type structure (low-pressure phase). On the electronic states of the CsCl-type (high-pressure) phases, where the robustness of Tc is observed, blurry electronic band structure appears with increasing DSmix, which indicates the evolution of blurry (glassy) electronic states in HE MTe with the CsCl-type structure. The estimated electronic DOS at Fermi energy cannot explain the changes in Tc for HE MTe when assuming conventional electron-phonon superconductivity, but the conventional explanation seems to work for PbTe. Therefore, the pairing mechanisms in MTe with DSmix > 1.1R are affected by glassy phonon and/or blurry electronic states in MTe, and the robustness of superconductivity would be originating from unique electron-phonon coupling.