Superconductivity under pressure in a chromium-based kagome metal

Superconductivity in a highly correlated kagome system has been theoretically proposed for years (refs.  1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ), yet the experimental realization is hard to achieve 6 , 7 . The recently discovered vanadium-based kagome materials 8 , which exhibit both superconductivity 9 , 10 , 11 and charge-density-wave orders 12 , 13 , 14 , are nonmagnetic 8 , 9 and weakly correlated 15 , 16 . Thus these materials are unlikely to host the exotic superconductivity theoretically proposed. Here we report the discovery of a chromium-based kagome metal, CsCr 3 Sb 5 , which is contrastingly featured with strong electron correlations, frustrated magnetism and characteristic flat bands close to the Fermi level. Under ambient pressure, this kagome metal undergoes a concurrent structural and magnetic phase transition at 55 K, with a stripe-like 4 a 0 structural modulation. At high pressure, the phase transition evolves into two transitions, possibly associated with charge-density-wave and antiferromagnetic spin-density-wave orderings. These density-wave-like orders are gradually suppressed with pressure and, remarkably, a superconducting dome emerges at 3.65–8.0 GPa. The maximum of the superconducting transition temperature, T c max  = 6.4 K, appears when the density-wave-like orders are completely suppressed at 4.2 GPa, and the normal state exhibits a non-Fermi-liquid behaviour, reminiscent of unconventional superconductivity and quantum criticality in iron-based superconductors 17 , 18 . Our work offers an unprecedented platform for investigating superconductivity in correlated kagome systems.