Competing Striped Structures in La2CuO4+y

• DOI: 10.1007/s10948-013-2164-x
• Publication Date: 2013-03-15T17:47:08Z
• Authors: Nicola Poccia; Alessandro Ricci; Gaetano Campi; A.-S. Caporale; Antonio Bianconi
• Keywords: Atomic units; Lattice (music)

9 pages, 3 figures, "Superstripes 2012" conference Erice 11-16 July 2012<br/>High temperature superconductivity emerges in unique materials, like cuprates, that belong to the class of heterostructures at atomic limit, made of a superlattice of superconducting atomic layers intercalated by spacer layers. The physical properties of a strongly correlated electronic system, emerge from the competition between different phases with a resulting inhomogeneity from nanoscale to micron scale. Here we focus on the spatial arrangements of two types of structural defects in the cuprate La2CuO4+y : i) the local lattice distortions in the CuO2 active layers and ii) the lattice distortions around the charged chemical dopants in the spacer layers. We use a new advanced microscopy method: scanning nano X-ray diffraction (nXRD). We show here that local lattice distortions form incommensurate nanoscale ripples spatially anticorrelated with puddles of self-organized chemical dopants in the spacer layers.<br/>