How pressure enhances the critical temperature of superconductivity in YBa 2 Cu 3 O 6+ y

Abstract

High-temperature superconducting cuprates respond to doping with a dome-like dependence of their critical temperature ( T c ). But the family-specific maximum T c can be surpassed by application of pressure, a compelling observation known for decades. We investigate the phenomenon with high-pressure anvil cell NMR and measure the charge content at planar Cu and O, and with it the doping of the ubiquitous CuO 2 plane with atomic-scale resolution. We find that pressure increases the overall hole doping, as widely assumed, but when it enhances T c above what can be achieved by doping, pressure leads to a hole redistribution favoring planar O. This is similar to the observation that the family-specific maximum T c is higher for materials where the hole content at planar O is higher at the expense of that at planar Cu. The latter reflects dependence of the maximum T c on the Cu–O bond covalence and the charge-transfer gap. The results presented here indicate that the pressure-induced enhancement of the maximum T c points to the same mechanism.