Pressure effects on the structural and superconducting transitions in La3Co4Sn13

Abstract

La3Co4Sn13 is a superconducting material with transition temperature at Tc = 2.70 K, which presents a superlattice structural transition at T* ~ 150 K, a common feature for this class of compounds. However, for this material, it is not clear that at T* the lattice distortions arise from a charge density wave (CDW) or from a distinct microscopic origin. Interestingly, it has been suggested in isostructural non-magnetic intermetallic compounds that T* can be suppressed to zero temperature, by combining chemical and external pressure, and a quantum critical point is argued to be observed near these critical doping/pressure. Our study shows that application of pressure on single-crystalline La3Co4Sn13 enhances Tc and decreases T*. We observe thermal hysteresis loops for cooling/heating cycles around T* for P > 0.6 GPa, in electrical resistivity measurements, which are not seen in x-ray diffraction data. The hysteresis in electrical measurements may be due to the pinning of the CDW phase to impurities/defects, while the superlattice structural transition maintains its ambient pressure second-order transition nature under pressure. From our experiments we estimate that T* vanishes at around 5.5 GPa, though no quantum critical behavior is observed up to 2.53 GPa.

arXiv comment6 pages, 5 figures

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• Possible quantum fluctuations in the vicinity of the quantum critical point of $(\mathbf{Sr},\mathbf{Ca}{)}_3\mathbf{I}{\mathbf{r}}_4\mathbf{S}{\mathbf{n}}_{13}$ revealed by high-energy X-ray diffraction study
• Effects of external pressure on the narrow gap semiconductor Ce${}_3$Cd${}_2$As${}_6$