Inducing Strong Superconductivity in WTe2 by a Proximity Effect

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Abstract
The search for proximity-induced superconductivity in topological materials has generated widespread interest in the condensed matter physics community. The superconducting states inheriting nontrivial topology at interfaces are expected to exhibit exotic phenomena such as topological superconductivity and Majorana zero modes, which hold promise for applications in quantum computation. However, a practical realization of such hybrid structures based on topological semimetals and superconductors has hitherto been limited. Here, we report the strong proximity-induced superconductivity in type-II Weyl semimetal WTe2, in a van der Waals hybrid structure obtained by mechanically transferring NbSe2 onto various thicknesses of WTe2. When the WTe2 thickness (tWTe2) reaches 21 nm, the superconducting transition occurs around the critical temperature (Tc) of NbSe2 with a gap amplitude (Δp) of 0.38 meV and an unexpected ultralong proximity length (lp) up to 7 μm. With the thicker 42 nm WTe2 layer, however, the proximity effect yields Tc ≈ 1.2 K, Δp = 0.07 meV, and a short lp of less than 1 μm. Our theoretical calculations, based on the Bogoliubov–de Gennes equations in the clean limit, predict that the induced superconducting gap is a sizable fraction of the NbSe2 superconducting one when tWTe2 is less than 30 nm and then decreases quickly as tWTe2 increases. This agrees qualitatively well with the experiments. Such observations form a basis in the search for superconducting phases in topological semimetals.
Funding Information
  • Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China (2016YFA0300604, 2017YFA0302901, 2018YFA0305601, 2017YFA0303302)
  • Science Foundation Ireland (14/IA/2624, 16/US-C2C/3287)
  • National Natural Science Foundation of China (11474058, 11474330, 11774399, 61674040)

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