Evidence for the Sr2RuO4 intercalations in the Sr3Ru2O7 region of the Sr3Ru2O7-Sr2RuO4 eutectic system

Abstract

Although Sr3Ru2O7 has not been reported to exhibit superconductivity so far, ac susceptibility measurements revealed multiple superconducting transitions occurring in the Sr3Ru2O7 region cut from Sr3Ru2O7-Sr2RuO4 eutectic crystals. Based on various experimental results, some of us proposed the scenario in which Sr2RuO4 thin slabs with a few layers of the RuO2 plane are embedded in the Sr3Ru2O7 region as stacking faults and multiple superconducting transitions arise from the distribution of the slab thickness. To examine this scenario, we measured the resistivity along the ab plane (rho_ab) using a Sr3Ru2O7-region sample cut from the eutectic crystal, as well as along the c axis (rho_c) using the same crystal. As a result, we detected resistance drops associated with superconductivity only in rho_ab, but not in rho_c. These results support the Sr2RuO4 thin-slab scenario. In addition, we measured the resistivity of a single crystal of pure Sr3Ru2O7 with very high quality and found that pure Sr3Ru2O7 does not exhibit superconductivity down to 15 mK.

4 pages, 2 figures, Int. Conf. on Low Temperature Physics (LT25)

References in corpus (5)

• Metamagnetism and critical fluctuations in high quality single crystals of the bilayer ruthenate Sr3Ru2O7
• The ground state of Sr3Ru2O7 revisited; Fermi liquid close to a ferromagnetic instability
• The de Haas-van Alphen effect across the metamagnetic transition in Sr${}_3$Ru${}_2$O${}_7$
• Superconductivity in Sr2RuO4-Sr3Ru2O7 eutectic crystals
• Multiple superconducting transitions in the Sr3Ru2O7 region of Sr3Ru2O7-Sr2RuO4 eutectic crystals