The role of pressure in the study of organic superconductivity

Pressure is an important variable in the study of many material properties but it has played an exceptionally key role in the field of organic superconductivity. The first demonstration of bulk superconductivity in an organic material by Jerome and coworkers was at a pressure of about 9 kbar in (TMTSF)2PF6. Pressure studies on this system uncovered new oscillatory phenomena and pointed the way to chemical stabilization of ambient pressure superconductors. The very large pressure derivatives for the superconducting transition temperature in the recently discovered 10K material k-(BEDT-TTF)2Cu(NCS)2 may again guide chemical modification leading to high transition temperatures. Recent results are discussed