Superconductivity in infinite-layer nickelate La$_{1-x}$Ca$_x$NiO$_2$ thin films

Abstract

We report the observation of superconductivity in infinite-layer Ca-doped LaNiO$_2$ (La$_{1-x}$Ca$_x$NiO$_2$) thin films and construct their phase diagram. Unlike the metal-insulator transition in Nd- and Pr-based nickelates, the undoped and underdoped La1-xCaxNiO2 thin films are entirely insulating from 300 K down to 2 K. A superconducting dome is observed at 0.15<x<0.3 with weakly insulating behavior at the overdoped regime. Moreover, the sign of the Hall coefficient $R_H$ changes at low temperature for samples with a higher doping level. However, distinct from the Nd- and Pr-based nickelates, the $R_H$-sign-change temperature remains at around 35 K as the doping increases, which begs further theoretical and experimental investigation in order to reveal the role of the 4f orbital to the (multi)band nature of the superconducting nickelates. Our results also emphasize the significant role of lattice correlation on the multiband structures of the infinite-layer nickelates.