Strong prospects for uniaxial strain in 2017

“…we are only beginning  to  scratch  the  surface  of  what  is possible  with  uniaxial  strain  as  a  continuously tunable,  in  situ  tool  for  manipulating the properties of quantum materials”

Professor Kyle M. Shen, Science, 355, (6321), 133. 13th January 2017.

Already in 2017, there have been some very interesting research published using the application of uniaxial strain. Steppke et al, use a uniaxial strain cell to tune the electronic properties of the consistently intriguing unconventional superconductor, strontium ruthenate. The team found that under uniaxial strain there was not only a large increase in the critical temperature of the superconductor but some tantalising signs that the parity of the superconducting charge carrier changes from an even to an odd parity.

In addition, Professor Kyle M. Shen (Cornell) writes in a letter published in Science about the work of Steppke et al. as well as about the value of uniaxial strain tuning as a valuable new tool in the physicists toolkit.

All in all, it is looking like uniaxial strain tuning has become one of the most promising routes to making high profile advances in the field of strongly correlated electron systems.

 

 

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