Advances in high-pressure laser floating zone growth: The Laser Optical Kristallmacher II (LOKII).

The optical floating zone crystal growth technique is a well-established method for obtaining large, high-purity single crystals. While the floating zone method has been constantly evolving for over six decades, the development of high-pressure (up to 1000 bar) growth systems has only recently been realized via the combination of laser-based heating sources with an all-metal chamber. While our inaugural high-pressure laser floating zone furnace design demonstrated the successful growth of new volatile and metastable phases, the furnace design faces several limitations with imaging quality, heating profile control, and chamber cooling power. Here, we present a second-generation design of the high-pressure laser floating zone furnace, "Laser Optical Kristallmacher II" (LOKII), and demonstrate that this redesign facilitates new advances in crystal growth by highlighting several exemplar materials: α-Fe2O3, ß-Ga2O3, and La2CuO4+δ. Notably, for La2CuO4+δ, we demonstrate the feasibility and long-term stability of traveling solvent floating zone growth under a record pressure of 700 bar.

Overdamped Antiferromagnetic Strange Metal State in Sr_{3}IrRuO_{7}.

The unconventional electronic ground state of Sr_{3}IrRuO_{7} is explored via resonant x-ray scattering techniques and angle-resolved photoemission measurements. As the Ru content approaches x=0.5 in Sr_{3}(Ir_{1-x}Ru_{x})_{2}O_{7}, intermediate to the J_{eff}=1/2 Mott state in Sr_{3}Ir_{2}O_{7} and the quantum critical metal in Sr_{3}Ru_{2}O_{7}, a thermodynamically distinct metallic state emerges. The electronic structure of this intermediate phase lacks coherent quasiparticles, and charge transport exhibits a linear temperature dependence over a wide range of temperatures. Spin dynamics associated with the long-range antiferromagnetism of this phase show nearly local, overdamped magnetic excitations and an anomalously large energy scale of 200 meV-an energy far in excess of exchange energies present within either the Sr_{3}Ir_{2}O_{7} or Sr_{3}Ru_{2}O_{7} solid-solution end points. Overdamped quasiparticle dynamics driven by strong spin-charge coupling are proposed to explain the incoherent spectral features of the strange metal state in Sr_{3}IrRuO_{7}.

High-pressure laser floating zone furnace.

The floating zone technique is a well-established single crystal growth method in materials research, which is able to produce volumetrically large specimens with extremely high purities. However, traditional furnace designs have relied on heating from high-powered bulb sources in combination with parabolic mirrors and hence are constrained to transparent growth chambers with large solid angles of optical access. This results in a stark limitation on achievable processing gas pressures and in turn renders a range of compounds unsuitable for crystal growth by the floating zone technique, either due to excessive volatility or due to metastability. Here, we demonstrate a novel high-pressure laser-based floating zone system (HP-LFZ). The use of lasers for heating allows implementation of a high-strength metal growth chamber, permitting greatly enhanced processing pressures over conventional mirror-based designs, with the current design allowing for pressures up to 1000 bar. We demonstrate a series of example single crystal growths using this design in pressures up to 675 bar, a significant increase over processing pressures attainable in commercially available floating zone systems. The general utility of the HP-LFZ is also illustrated via growths of a range of complex oxides.