High-Temperature Superconductivity in a Single Copper-Oxygen Plane

Abstract

Superconductivity Sliced Thin Since the initial characterization of high-temperature cuprate superconductors, an intriguing challenge has been determining the minimum number of copper oxide planes needed to support the superconducting state. The observation of superconductivity at interfaces of metallic oxides and insulators provides a route to addressing this question. Logvenov et al. (p. 699 ) describe a method for layer-by-layer synthesis of alternating oxides of metal and insulators based on La and Cu. Layers three unit cells thick supported superconductivity with a transition temperature of 32 kelvin. When selected layers were then doped with Zn atoms to suppress superconductivity, the interface superconductivity was shown to arise from a single copper-oxide plane.