Abstract
The discovery of high-temperature superconductivity under high pressure in Ruddlesden–Popper phase nickelates has captured notable attention in the condensed matter physics community. Here we report superconductivity in a distinct hybrid nickelate, La5Ni3O11, formed by alternating stacks of La3Ni2O7 and La2NiO4 layers. This nickelate also exhibits a density-wave transition at approximately 170 K near ambient pressure. With increasing pressure, this density-wave transition shifts to higher temperatures and abruptly disappears around 12 GPa, followed by the emergence of superconductivity, indicating a first-order phase transition. But the optimal superconductivity with large superconducting volume fraction is observed at approximately 21 GPa with \({T}_{{\rm{c}}}^{{\;\rm{zero}}}\) = 54 K. High-pressure X-ray diffraction experiments reveal a structural phase transition from an orthorhombic structure to a tetragonal structure at lower pressure. Notably, this structural change has minimal impact on the density-wave or superconducting phases, suggesting a limited role of lattice degrees of freedom in this material. These findings establish La5Ni3O11 as a new superconducting member of the Ruddlesden–Popper nickelate family and offer valuable insights into the interplay between structure, electronic order and superconductivity in hybrid nickelates.
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Data availability
The data supporting the findings of this study are available via figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.29484635 (ref. 31). The detailed crystal structure data from this study have been deposited in the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC) website with the deposition number CSD 2469506. These data are available from the corresponding author upon request. Source data are provided with the paper.
Code availability
The codes that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge fruitful discussions with H. Mao, Z. Wang and Z. Xiang. We also thank Z. Zhu, F. Lan, Y. Liu and H. Lou for their experimental assistance. This work is supported by the National Key R&D Programme of the MOST of China (Grant No. 2022YFA1602601 (to X.C. and T.W.)), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos 12494592 (to M.S. and J.Y.), 12488201 (to X.C.), 11888101 (to X.C.), 12034004 (to T.W.), 12161160316 (to T.W.), 12325403 (to T.W.) and 12204448 (to M.S.)), the Chinese Academy of Sciences under contract no. JZHKYPT-2021-08 (to X.C., T.W. and J.Y.), the CAS Project for Young Scientists in Basic Research (Grant No. YBR-048 (to J.Y., T.W. and M.S.)) and the Innovation Programme for Quantum Science and Technology (Grant No. 2021ZD0302800 (to T.W. and X.C.)). D.P. and Q.Z. acknowledge the financial support from the Shanghai Science and Technology Committee (Grant No. 22JC1410300 (to Q.Z. and D.P.)) and Shanghai Key Laboratory of Material Frontiers Research in Extreme Environments (Grant No. 22dz2260800 (to Q.Z. and D.P.)). A portion of this research used resources at the beamline 17UM of the Shanghai synchrotron radiation facility (https://cstr.cn/31124.02.SSRF.BL17UM).
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Contributions
X.C. conceived the research project and coordinated the experiments. M.S. grew the single crystals and performed the structural characterization at ambient pressure with the help of R.W. and M.D. H.L. and K.F. measured the magnetic torque data. S.Y. and B.G. collected the TEM images. D.P. performed the resistance measurements using helium gas as the pressure-transmitting medium under pressure with the help of Q.Z. D.P., Z.X. and Y.W. performed the synchrotron powder diffraction measurements and analysis under high pressure using helium gas as the pressure-transmitting medium with help from Q.Z. and Z.Z. M.S., D.P., J.Y., T.W. and X.C. analysed the data. M.S., D.P., K.F., T.W. and X.C. wrote the paper with input from all the authors.
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Extended data
Extended Data Fig. 1 Reciprocal lattice data.
(a)–(c), Reciprocal lattice data of La5Ni3O11 along the a*, b* and c* axes, respectively. The size of the spots represents the intensity of the diffraction peaks.
Extended Data Fig. 2 EDX results of the as-grown microcrystals.
The element ratio is La:Ni = 1.67:1, which is consistent with the chemical formula of La5Ni3O11.
Extended Data Fig. 3 Resistance curves for sample S1.
Temperature-dependent resistance curves for La5Ni3O11 (S1) at various pressures.
Extended Data Fig. 4 Superconductivity and the upper critical field.
(a) R(T) curves for La5Ni3O11 (S3) at 18.2 GPa under various magnetic fields along the c-axis direction. The onset Tc is quickly suppressed to a lower temperature with increasing magnetic field. (b) The upper critical field extracted with different criteria in (a), where the RN is the resistance at the normal state. There is an obvious positive curvature in the Hc2-Tc curve. The upper critical field at the zero-temperature limit is fitted via the two-band model at the clean limit.
Extended Data Fig. 5 Powder XRD patterns of the La5Ni3O11 crystal under various pressures.
(a) Powder XRD patterns of the La5Ni3O11 crystal under various pressures in the 2ϴ range of 12–14°, where the dashed line indicates the signal from the gasket (Re). (b) Rietveld refinement of the powder XRD pattern for La5Ni3O11 at 5.8 GPa. The collected data can be well fitted via the space group P4/mmm. The blue circles and red lines represent the observed and calculated data, respectively. The blue lines indicate the difference between the observed and calculated data. The short green and cyan vertical lines indicate the calculated diffraction peak positions of La5Ni3O11 with P4/mmm space group and Re.
Supplementary information
Source Data Fig. 1
Structure and density-wave transition at nearly ambient pressure.
Source Data Fig. 2
Electrical transport properties under high pressure.
Source Data Fig. 3
Magnetic susceptibility under high pressure.
Source Data Fig. 4
Structural evolution under high pressure.
Source Data Fig. 5
Phase diagram.
Source Data Extended Data Fig. 2
EDX results.
Source Data Extended Data Fig. 3
Resistance curves for sample S1.
Source Data Extended Data Fig. 4
Superconductivity and the upper critical fields.
Source Data Extended Data Fig. 5
Powder XRD patterns under various pressures.
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Shi, M., Peng, D., Fan, K. et al. Pressure induced superconductivity in hybrid Ruddlesden‒Popper La5Ni3O11 single crystals. Nat. Phys. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-025-03023-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-025-03023-3
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