High-Tc superconductivity from an atomic point of view via tunneling

Abstract

Even after 30 years of discovery of the high temperature superconductivity (HTSC) from the cuprate compounds by Bednorz and Müller, the mechanism of the formation of Cooper pairs well above the liquid nitrogen boiling temperature is still remained to be elucidated. The discovery of a yet another HTSC family of the iron-based superconductors seemed to add more complexity to this puzzle, but also seems to render a prospect of finding a universal principle shared by the entire HTSC family. The tunneling experiments, on the other hand, also witnessed remarkable breakthroughs ever since Giaever succeeded the first tunneling experiment on a superconducting aluminum. The scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) invented by Binnig and Rohrer began to be heavily applied to the research of the condensed matter and became one of the most versatile spectroscopic tools as well as the most powerful microscope available also in the HTSC research field as of today. In this review, we would like to convey a snapshot of the current application of the STM in the research of HTSC, mainly focusing on the studies using the spectroscopic imaging scanning tunneling microscopy (SI-STM) which eventually led to the scanning Josephson tunneling microscopy (SJTM) by which we can visualize the superconducting Cooper pairs in an atomic scale. © 2017 Elsevier B.V