An archetypical layered topological insulator Bi 2 Se 3 becomes superconductive upon doping with Sr, Nb or Cu. Superconducting properties of these materials in the presence of in-plane magnetic field demonstrate spontaneous symmetry breaking: 180 • -rotation symmetry of superconductivity versus 120 • -rotation symmetry of the crystal. Such behavior brilliantly confirms nematic topological superconductivity. To what extent this nematicity is due to superconducting pairing in these materials, rather than due to crystal structure distortions? This question remains unanswered, because so far no visible deviations from the 3-fold crystal symmetry were resolved in these materials. To address this question we grow high quality single crystals of Sr x Bi 2 Se 3 , perform detailed x-ray diffraction and magnetotransport studies and reveal that the observed superconducting nematicity direction correlates with the direction of small structural distortions in these samples (∼0.02% elongation in one crystallographic direction). Additional anisotropy comes from orientation of the crystallite axes. 2-fold symmetry of magnetoresistance observed in the most uniform crystals well above the critical temperature demonstrates that these structural distortions are nevertheless strong enough. Our data in combination with strong sample-to-sample variation of the superconductive anisotropy parameter are indicative for significance of the structural factor in the apparent nematic superconductivity in Sr x Bi 2 Se 3 .

We report comprehensive (magneto)transport studies of the two-phase state in (TMTSF) 2 ClO 4 , where superconducting (SC) phase coexists with spin-density wave insulator (SDW). By tuning the degree of ClO 4 anion ordering in controlled manner we smoothly suppress the SDW state and study resulting evolution of the SC phase spatial texture. We find that as SDW is suppressed, SC regions initially appear inside the SDW insulator in a form of filaments extended in the interlayer direction and further merge into the two-dimensional sheets across the most conducting axis of the crystal. We demonstrate that almost all our results can be explained within the soliton phase model, though with several assumptions they can also be related with the creation of non-uniform deformations. We believe that the anisotropy is intrinsic to SC/SDW coexistence in various quasi one-dimensional superconductors.

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Using various transport and magnetotransport probes we study the coexistence of spin-density wave and superconductor states in (TMTSF)2ClO4 at various degrees of ClO4 anions ordering. In the two-phase complex state when both superconductivity and spin-density wave are observed in transport, we find prehistory effects, enhancement of the superconducting critical field, and strong spatial anisotropy of the superconducting state. These features are inconsistent with the conventional model of structural inhomogeneities produced by anion ordering transition. We reveal instead that superconductor and spin-density wave regions overlap on the temperature -dimerization gap V phase diagram, where V is varied by anion ordering. The effect of anion ordering on (TMTSF)2ClO4 properties is thus analogous to that of pressure on (TMTSF)2X (X=PF6 or AsF6), thereby unifying general picture of the coexistence of superconductivity and spin-density wave in these compounds.