Organic Conductors and Superconductors: New Directions in the Solid State

Abstract

In single-crystal organic salts, we find a keen competition between superconducting, magnetic, insulating, and metallic states. The physics of these materials is further enriched by the sensitivity of these states to pressure, temperature, chemical formulation, and magnetic field. A growing international community of scientists have turned their attention to these materials, and are applying the techniques and theories of metal and semiconductor physics to probe these new systems. In this article we will explore these materials. We will discover that these materials have given us many new things: a renaissance in fermiology, new high-magnetic-field states of matter, a bulk quantum Hall effect, new challenges in the calculation of energy bands on a small energy scale, and elusive behavior which seems one step away from our present understanding of physics in low dimensions. Electron correlations probably play an important role in determining the phenomena, and should be considered in more microscopic theoretical treatments of these systems.