Abstract
It is now well established that superconductivity in cuprates competes with charge modulations giving an electronic phase separation at nanoscale. More specifically, superconducting electronic current takes root in the available free space left by electronic charge ordered domains, called charge density wave (CDW) puddles. This means that CDW domain arrangement plays a fundamental role in the mechanism of high temperature superconductivity in cuprates. Here we report about the possibility of controlling the population and spatial organization of the charge density wave puddles in a single crystal La2CuO4+y through X-ray illumination and thermal treatments. We apply a pump-probe method—based on X-ray illumination as a pump and X-ray diffraction as a probe—setting a writing/reading procedure of CDW puddles. Our findings are expected to allow new routes for advanced design and manipulation of superconducting pathways in new electronics.
Highlights
The nano-electronics for new generations of devices made of complex modern materials are extremely sensitive to changes in defect disposition [1,2,3]
Either oxygen interstitial-rich domains or charge density wave (CDW) puddles are sensitive to X-ray illumination in a different temperature range [42,43] but together they work to establish the optimum inhomogeneity, which raises the critical temperature to the optimum value [18]
Indexing of superlattice peaks around the Bragg lattice reflections shows the presence of incommensurate CDW modulation with wave-vector qCDW = (0.023a* + 0.21b* + 0.29c*) where a*, b*, and c* are the unit vectors of the orthorhombic reciprocal lattice
Summary
The nano-electronics for new generations of devices made of complex modern materials are extremely sensitive to changes in defect disposition [1,2,3]. In case of HTS, electronic organization in modulated structures called charge density waves (CDWs) have been found to play an essential role in superconducting mechanisms [24,25,26,27]. CDWs in cuprates have been found recently through the real space visualization of the 3D superlattices measured by scanning micro X-ray diffraction in different single crystals [8,9,18,23,28,29,30].
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