Inducing superconductivity in Weyl semimetal microstructures by selective ion sputtering

Bachmann, Maja D.; Nair, Nityan; Flicker, Felix; Ilan, Roni; Meng, Tobias; Ghimire, Nirmal J.; Bauer, Eric D.; Ronning, Filip; Analytis, James G.; Moll, Philip J.  W.

doi:10.1126/sciadv.1602983

Inducing superconductivity in Weyl semimetal microstructures by selective ion sputtering

Journal Article · Wed May 24 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · Science Advances

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1602983· OSTI ID:1413726

^[1]; Nair, Nityan ^[2]; ^[2]; ^[3]; Meng, Tobias ^[4]; Ghimire, Nirmal J. ^[5]; Bauer, Eric D. ^[5]; Ronning, Filip ^[5]; Analytis, James G. ^[6]; Moll, Philip J. W. ^[7]

Max Planck Inst. for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden (Germany); Univ. of St. Andrews, Scotland (United Kingdom). Scottish Universities Physics Alliance, School of Physics and Astronomy
Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Physics
Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Physics; Tel Aviv Univ., Ramat Aviv (Israel). Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy
Technical Univ. of Dresden (Germany). Inst. of Theoretical Physics
Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Physics; Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Max Planck Inst. for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden (Germany)

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. Here, we show a new route to reliably fabricate superconducting microstructures from the nonsuperconducting Weyl semimetal NbAs under ion irradiation. Furthermore, 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.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC); USDOE Office of Science (SC). Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231; AC52-06NA25396

OSTI ID:: 1413726

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1414142

Report Number(s):: LA-UR--17-21856; ark:/13030/qt8gv3r5ss

Journal Information:: Science Advances, Journal Name: Science Advances Journal Issue: 5 Vol. 3; ISSN 2375-2548

Publisher:: AAASCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Related Subjects

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY
Majorana-mode
Material Science
Weyl semi-metals
microstructuring
proximity-induced superconductivity
selective ion sputtering

Inducing superconductivity in Weyl semimetal microstructures by selective ion sputtering

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