Novel uniaxial strain device for transport and scanning probe experiments

In recent years uniaxial strain has emerged as an important probe of condensed matter systems, coupling to phenomena such as nematicity [1], superconductivity [2], magnetism [3], and metal insulator transitions [4]. Existing methods for in-situ application of high strains generally have been based off of extension piezoelectric actuators [5]. We present a method of strain application that relies on stacks of shear piezoelectric actuators to apply up to 1% uniaxial extension and compression at cryogenic temperatures homogeneously to up to 100 um square regions of materials ranging from transition metal dichalcogenides to ruthenates. Our method has been successfully applied to electrical transport, scanning tunneling microscopy, and scanning near-field optical microscopy measurements. Some early results using this device include measurement of a large strain effect on superconductivity in 2H-NbSe₂, the formation of solitons in 2H-MoSe₂, and the insulator-metal transition in 10% Ti-doped Ca₃Ru₂O₇.
[1] Jiun-Haw Chu et al, Science 337, 710 (2012)
[2] Clifford W. Hicks et al, Science 344, 283 (2014)
[3] Joonbum Park et al, Phys. Rev. B 97, 024411 (2018)
[4] Haruka Taniguchi et al, Phys. Rev. B 88, 205111 (2013)
[5] Clifford W. Hicks et al, Rev. Sci. Instruments 85, 065003 (2014)