Superconductors under uniaxial pressure: Exploring Sr2RuO4 and FeSe

With the recent advances in applying uniaxial pressure the condensed matter community has the possibility to control the electronic and superconducting properties of many materials. Here we will introduce the experimental setup to apply pressures up to 1 GPa to bulk crystals of hard (Sr₂RuO₄) and ductile (FeSe) compounds. The benchmark superconductor Sr₂RuO₄ exhibits strong changes to its Fermi surface topology in this pressure range and we discuss implications on the possible order parameters. 
For the class of iron-based superconductors the application of uniaxial pressure is challenging because of their soft and ductile nature. Here we show that by applying strain indirectly through a suitable substrate we can explore the relationship between electronic nematicity and resistivity in FeSe.