Inducing superconductivity in Weyl semimetal microstructures by selective ion sputtering

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Maja D. Bachmann - , Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, University of St Andrews (Author)
  • Nityan Nair - , University of California at Berkeley (Author)
  • Felix Flicker - , University of California at Berkeley (Author)
  • Roni Ilan - , University of California at Berkeley, Tel Aviv University (Author)
  • Tobias Meng - , Chair of Theoretical Solid State Physics (Author)
  • Nirmal J. Ghimire - , Los Alamos National Laboratory (Author)
  • Eric D. Bauer - , Los Alamos National Laboratory (Author)
  • Filip Ronning - , Los Alamos National Laboratory (Author)
  • James G. Analytis - , University of California at Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Author)
  • Philip J.W. Moll - , Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids (Author)

Abstract

By introducing a superconducting gap in Weyl or Dirac semimetals, the superconducting state inherits the nontrivial topology of their electronic structure. As a result, Weyl superconductors are expected to host exotic phenomena, such as nonzero-momentum pairing due to their chiral node structure, or zero-energy Majorana modes at the surface. These are of fundamental interest to improve our understanding of correlated topological systems, and, moreover, practical applications in phase-coherent devices and quantum applications have been proposed. Proximity-induced superconductivity promises to allow these experiments on nonsuperconducting Weyl semimetals. We show a new route to reliably fabricate superconducting microstructures from the nonsuperconducting Weyl semimetal NbAs under ion irradiation. The significant difference in the surface binding energy of Nb and As leads to a natural enrichment of Nb at the surface during ion milling, forming a superconducting surface layer (Tc ∼ 3.5 K). Being formed from the target crystal itself, the ideal contact between the superconductor and the bulk may enable an effective gapping of the Weyl nodes in the bulk because of the proximity effect. Simple ion irradiation may thus serve as a powerful tool for the fabrication of topological quantum devices from monoarsenides, even on an industrial scale.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere1602983
JournalScience advances
Volume3
Issue number5
Publication statusPublished - May 2017
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

PubMed 28560340

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas