Superconductivity in the antiperovskite Dirac-metal oxide Sr3-x SnO

Abstract

Investigations of perovskite oxides triggered by the discovery of high-temperature and unconventional superconductors have had crucial roles in stimulating and guiding the development of modern condensed-matter physics. Antiperovskite oxides are charge-inverted counterpart materials to perovskite oxides, with unusual negative ionic states of a constituent metal. No superconductivity was reported among the antiperovskite oxides so far. Here we present the first superconducting antiperovskite oxide Sr3-x SnO with the transition temperature of around 5 K. Sr3SnO possesses Dirac points in its electronic structure, and we propose from theoretical analysis a possibility of a topological odd-parity superconductivity analogous to the superfluid 3He-B in moderately hole-doped Sr3-x SnO. We envision that this discovery of a new class of oxide superconductors will lead to a rapid progress in physics and chemistry of antiperovskite oxides consisting of unusual metallic anions.