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Isotope effect in superconducting n-doped SrTiO₃

A Stucky¹, G W Scheerer¹, Z Ren¹

¹Department of Quantum Matter Physics, Université de Genève, CH-1211 Genève 4, Switzerland.

Scientific Reports

|November 29, 2016

Abstract:

We report the influence on the superconducting critical temperature T_c in doped SrTiO₃ of the substitution of the natural ¹⁶O atoms by the heavier isotope ¹⁸O. We observe that for a wide range of doping this substitution causes a strong (~50%) enhancement of T_c. Also the magnetic critical field H_c2 is increased by a factor ~2. Such a strong impact on T_c and H_c2, with a sign opposite to conventional superconductors, is unprecedented. The observed effect could be the consequence of strong coupling of the doped electrons to lattice vibrations (phonons), a notion which finds support in numerous optical and photo-emission studies. The unusually large size of the observed isotope effect supports a recent model for superconductivity in these materials based on strong coupling to the ferroelectric soft modes of SrTiO₃.

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