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Inverse melting refers to the rare thermodynamic phenomenon in which a solidmelts into a liquid upon cooling, a transition that can occur only when theordered (solid) phase has more entropy than the disordered (liquid) phase, andthat has so far only been observed in a handful of systems. Here we report thefirst experimental observation for the inverse melting of an electronic liquidcrystalline order in strontium-doped lanthanum nickelate, a compoundisostructural with the superconducting cuprates, with a hole dopingconcentration of 1/3. Using x-ray scattering, we demonstrate that the isotropiccharge modulation is driven to nematic order by fluctuating spins and shows aninverse melting transition. Using a phenomenological Landau theory, we showthat this inverse melting transition is due to the interlayer coupling betweenthe charge and spin orders. This discovery points to the importance of theinterlayer correlations in the system, and provides a new perspective to studythe intricate nature of the electronic liquid crystal phases in stronglycorrelated electronic systems, including possibly the Cu- and Fe-based high-Tcsuperconductors.

Inverse Melting of an Electronic Liquid Crystal