Inducing superconductivity in Weyl semimetal microstructures by selective ion sputtering
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. 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.
- Authors:
-
[1];
[2];
[3];
[5];
[5];
- Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden (Germany); Univ. of St. Andrews, St. Andrews (United Kingdom)
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Tel Aviv Univ., Tel Aviv (Israel)
- Technische Univ. Dresden, Dresden (Germany)
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden (Germany)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC). Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22); USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1414142
- Alternate Identifier(s):
- OSTI ID: 1413726
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-17-21856
Journal ID: ISSN 2375-2548
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396; AC02-05CH11231
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Science Advances
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 3; Journal Issue: 5; Journal ID: ISSN 2375-2548
- Publisher:
- AAAS
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY; Material Science; Weyl semi-metals; proximity-induced superconductivity; Majorana-mode; selective ion sputtering; microstructuring
Citation Formats
Bachmann, Maja D., Nair, Nityan, Flicker, Felix, Ilan, Roni, Meng, Tobias, Ghimire, Nirmal J., Bauer, Eric Dietzgen, Ronning, Filip, Analytis, James G., and Moll, Philip J. W. Inducing superconductivity in Weyl semimetal microstructures by selective ion sputtering. United States: N. p., 2017.
Web. doi:10.1126/sciadv.1602983.
Bachmann, Maja D., Nair, Nityan, Flicker, Felix, Ilan, Roni, Meng, Tobias, Ghimire, Nirmal J., Bauer, Eric Dietzgen, Ronning, Filip, Analytis, James G., & Moll, Philip J. W. Inducing superconductivity in Weyl semimetal microstructures by selective ion sputtering. United States. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1602983
Bachmann, Maja D., Nair, Nityan, Flicker, Felix, Ilan, Roni, Meng, Tobias, Ghimire, Nirmal J., Bauer, Eric Dietzgen, Ronning, Filip, Analytis, James G., and Moll, Philip J. W. Wed .
"Inducing superconductivity in Weyl semimetal microstructures by selective ion sputtering". United States. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1602983. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1414142.
@article{osti_1414142,
title = {Inducing superconductivity in Weyl semimetal microstructures by selective ion sputtering},
author = {Bachmann, Maja D. and Nair, Nityan and Flicker, Felix and Ilan, Roni and Meng, Tobias and Ghimire, Nirmal J. and Bauer, Eric Dietzgen and Ronning, Filip and Analytis, James G. and Moll, Philip J. W.},
abstractNote = {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.},
doi = {10.1126/sciadv.1602983},
journal = {Science Advances},
number = 5,
volume = 3,
place = {United States},
year = {Wed May 24 00:00:00 EDT 2017},
month = {Wed May 24 00:00:00 EDT 2017}
}
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
Other availability
Search WorldCat to find libraries that may hold this journal
Cited by: 58 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science
Web of Science
Save to My Library
You must Sign In or Create an Account in order to save documents to your library.
Works referenced in this record:
Nonsinusoidal Current-Phase Relationship in Josephson Junctions from the 3D Topological Insulator HgTe
journal, February 2015
- Sochnikov, Ilya; Maier, Luis; Watson, Christopher A.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 114, Issue 6
Topological insulators and superconductors
journal, October 2011
- Qi, Xiao-Liang; Zhang, Shou-Cheng
- Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 83, Issue 4
Josephson supercurrent through a topological insulator surface state
journal, February 2012
- Veldhorst, M.; Snelder, M.; Hoek, M.
- Nature Materials, Vol. 11, Issue 5
Bulk Superconducting Phase with a Full Energy Gap in the Doped Topological Insulator
journal, March 2011
- Kriener, M.; Segawa, Kouji; Ren, Zhi
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 106, Issue 12
‘Hard’ crystalline lattice in the Weyl semimetal NbAs
journal, January 2016
- Luo, Yongkang; Ghimire, N. J.; Bauer, E. D.
- Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, Vol. 28, Issue 5
Direct Measurement of Current-Phase Relations in Superconductor/Topological Insulator/Superconductor Junctions
journal, June 2013
- Sochnikov, Ilya; Bestwick, Andrew J.; Williams, James R.
- Nano Letters, Vol. 13, Issue 7
Magnetic torque anomaly in the quantum limit of Weyl semimetals
journal, August 2016
- Moll, Philip J. W.; Potter, Andrew C.; Nair, Nityan L.
- Nature Communications, Vol. 7, Issue 1
Anomalous Zero-Bias Conductance Peak in a Nb–InSb Nanowire–Nb Hybrid Device
journal, February 2012
- Deng, M. T.; Yu, C. L.; Huang, G. Y.
- Nano Letters, Vol. 12, Issue 12
Discovery of a Weyl fermion state with Fermi arcs in niobium arsenide
journal, August 2015
- Xu, Su-Yang; Alidoust, Nasser; Belopolski, Ilya
- Nature Physics, Vol. 11, Issue 9
Thickness Modulated Niobium Nanoconstrictions by Focused Ion Beam and Anodization
journal, April 2016
- De Leo, Natascia; Fretto, Matteo; Lacquaniti, Vincenzo
- IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity, Vol. 26, Issue 3
Proximity-induced high-temperature superconductivity in the topological insulators Bi2Se3 and Bi2Te3
journal, January 2012
- Zareapour, Parisa; Hayat, Alex; Zhao, Shu Yang F.
- Nature Communications, Vol. 3, Issue 1
Magnetotransport of single crystalline NbAs
journal, March 2015
- Ghimire, N. J.; Luo, Yongkang; Neupane, M.
- Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, Vol. 27, Issue 15
Unconventional Josephson Effect in Hybrid Superconductor-Topological Insulator Devices
journal, July 2012
- Williams, J. R.; Bestwick, A. J.; Gallagher, P.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 109, Issue 5
Induced superconductivity in the quantum spin Hall edge
journal, August 2014
- Hart, Sean; Ren, Hechen; Wagner, Timo
- Nature Physics, Vol. 10, Issue 9
Signatures of Majorana Fermions in Hybrid Superconductor-Semiconductor Nanowire Devices
journal, April 2012
- Mourik, V.; Zuo, K.; Frolov, S. M.
- Science, Vol. 336, Issue 6084
Search for Majorana Fermions in Superconductors
journal, April 2013
- Beenakker, C. W. J.
- Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics, Vol. 4, Issue 1
Electron-hole compensation effect between topologically trivial electrons and nontrivial holes in NbAs
journal, November 2015
- Luo, Yongkang; Ghimire, N. J.; Wartenbe, M.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 92, Issue 20
New directions in the pursuit of Majorana fermions in solid state systems
journal, June 2012
- Alicea, Jason
- Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 75, Issue 7
Artificial Topological Superconductor by the Proximity Effect
journal, May 2014
- Xu, Jin-Peng; Liu, Canhua; Wang, Mei-Xiao
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 112, Issue 21
Extremely large magnetoresistance and ultrahigh mobility in the topological Weyl semimetal candidate NbP
journal, June 2015
- Shekhar, Chandra; Nayak, Ajaya K.; Sun, Yan
- Nature Physics, Vol. 11, Issue 8
Experimental Detection of a Majorana Mode in the core of a Magnetic Vortex inside a Topological Insulator-Superconductor Heterostructure
journal, January 2015
- Xu, Jin-Peng; Wang, Mei-Xiao; Liu, Zhi Long
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 114, Issue 1
Hard gap in epitaxial semiconductor–superconductor nanowires
journal, January 2015
- Chang, W.; Albrecht, S. M.; Jespersen, T. S.
- Nature Nanotechnology, Vol. 10, Issue 3
Superconducting Proximity Effect and Majorana Fermions at the Surface of a Topological Insulator
journal, March 2008
- Fu, Liang; Kane, C. L.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 100, Issue 9
Generalized Diffusion Equation for Superconducting Alloys
journal, August 1970
- Usadel, Klaus D.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 25, Issue 8
Transport evidence for Fermi-arc-mediated chirality transfer in the Dirac semimetal Cd3As2
journal, July 2016
- Moll, Philip J. W.; Nair, Nityan L.; Helm, Toni
- Nature, Vol. 535, Issue 7611
Observation of Majorana fermions in ferromagnetic atomic chains on a superconductor
journal, October 2014
- Nadj-Perge, S.; Drozdov, I. K.; Li, J.
- Science, Vol. 346, Issue 6209
Srim-2003
journal, June 2004
- Ziegler, James F.
- Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms, Vol. 219-220
Gate-tuned normal and superconducting transport at the surface of a topological insulator
journal, September 2011
- Sacépé, Benjamin; Oostinga, Jeroen B.; Li, Jian
- Nature Communications, Vol. 2, Issue 1
Zero-bias peaks and splitting in an Al–InAs nanowire topological superconductor as a signature of Majorana fermions
journal, November 2012
- Das, Anindya; Ronen, Yuval; Most, Yonatan
- Nature Physics, Vol. 8, Issue 12
Superconducting proximity effect and possible evidence for Pearl vortices in a candidate topological insulator
journal, October 2011
- Zhang, Duming; Wang, Jian; DaSilva, Ashley M.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 84, Issue 16
Proximity-induced superconductivity in topological Bi Te Se and Bi Se films: Robust zero-energy bound state possibly due to Majorana fermions
journal, December 2011
- Koren, G.; Kirzhner, T.; Lahoud, E.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 84, Issue 22
Topological semimetal and Fermi-arc surface states in the electronic structure of pyrochlore iridates
journal, May 2011
- Wan, Xiangang; Turner, Ari M.; Vishwanath, Ashvin
- Physical Review B, Vol. 83, Issue 20
Negative magnetoresistance without well-defined chirality in the Weyl semimetal TaP
journal, May 2016
- Arnold, Frank; Shekhar, Chandra; Wu, Shu-Chun
- Nature Communications, Vol. 7, Issue 1
Introduction to Focused Ion Beams
book, January 2005
- Giannuzzi, Lucille A.; Stevie, Fred A.
- Springer New York, NY
Proximity-effect-induced superconducting phase in the topological insulator Bi Se
journal, October 2012
- Yang, Fan; Qu, Fanming; Shen, Jie
- Physical Review B, Vol. 86, Issue 13
Evidence for an anomalous current–phase relation in topological insulator Josephson junctions
journal, June 2015
- Kurter, C.; Finck, A. D. K.; Hor, Y. S.
- Nature Communications, Vol. 6, Issue 1
A Weyl Fermion semimetal with surface Fermi arcs in the transition metal monopnictide TaAs class
journal, June 2015
- Huang, Shin-Ming; Xu, Su-Yang; Belopolski, Ilya
- Nature Communications, Vol. 6, Issue 1
Superconducting Proximity Effect and Majorana Fermions at the Surface of a Topological Insulator
journal, January 2009
- Fu, L.; Kane, C. L.
- Topologica, Vol. 2, Issue 1
Signatures of Majorana fermions in hybrid superconductor-semiconductor nanowire devices
dataset, January 2012
- (Vincent), Mourik, V.; (Kun), Zuo, K.; (Sergey), Frolov, S. M.
- Science Magazine
Superconducting proximity effect and Majorana fermions at the surface of a topological insulator
text, January 2007
- Fu, Liang; Kane, C. L.
- arXiv
Gate-tuned normal and superconducting transport at the surface of a topological insulator
text, January 2011
- Sacepe, B.; Oostinga, J. B.; Li, J.
- arXiv
Induced Superconductivity in the Quantum Spin Hall Edge
text, January 2013
- Hart, Sean; Ren, Hechen; Wagner, Timo
- arXiv
Non-sinusoidal current-phase relationship in Josephson junctions from the 3D topological insulator HgTe
text, January 2014
- Sochnikov, Ilya; Maier, Luis; Watson, Christopher A.
- arXiv
Extremely large magnetoresistance and ultrahigh mobility in the topological Weyl semimetal NbP
text, January 2015
- Shekhar, Chandra; Nayak, Ajaya K.; Sun, Yan
- arXiv
Electron-hole compensation effect between topologically trivial electrons and nontrivial holes in NbAs
text, January 2015
- Luo, Yongkang; Ghimire, N. J.; Wartenbe, M.
- arXiv
"Hard" crystalline lattice in the Weyl semimetal NbAs
text, January 2015
- Luo, Yongkang; Ghimire, N. J.; Bauer, E. D.
- arXiv
Anomalous Zero-Bias Conductance Peak in a Nb–InSb Nanowire–Nb Hybrid Device
journal, February 2012
- Deng, M. T.; Yu, C. L.; Huang, G. Y.
- Nano Letters, Vol. 12, Issue 12
Direct Measurement of Current-Phase Relations in Superconductor/Topological Insulator/Superconductor Junctions
journal, June 2013
- Sochnikov, Ilya; Bestwick, Andrew J.; Williams, James R.
- Nano Letters, Vol. 13, Issue 7
Transport evidence for Fermi-arc-mediated chirality transfer in the Dirac semimetal Cd3As2
journal, July 2016
- Moll, Philip J. W.; Nair, Nityan L.; Helm, Toni
- Nature, Vol. 535, Issue 7611
Negative magnetoresistance without well-defined chirality in the Weyl semimetal TaP
journal, May 2016
- Arnold, Frank; Shekhar, Chandra; Wu, Shu-Chun
- Nature Communications, Vol. 7, Issue 1
Magnetic torque anomaly in the quantum limit of Weyl semimetals
journal, August 2016
- Moll, Philip J. W.; Potter, Andrew C.; Nair, Nityan L.
- Nature Communications, Vol. 7, Issue 1
Gate-tuned normal and superconducting transport at the surface of a topological insulator
journal, September 2011
- Sacépé, Benjamin; Oostinga, Jeroen B.; Li, Jian
- Nature Communications, Vol. 2, Issue 1
A Weyl Fermion semimetal with surface Fermi arcs in the transition metal monopnictide TaAs class
journal, June 2015
- Huang, Shin-Ming; Xu, Su-Yang; Belopolski, Ilya
- Nature Communications, Vol. 6, Issue 1
Zero-bias peaks and splitting in an Al–InAs nanowire topological superconductor as a signature of Majorana fermions
journal, November 2012
- Das, Anindya; Ronen, Yuval; Most, Yonatan
- Nature Physics, Vol. 8, Issue 12
Magnetotransport of single crystalline NbAs
journal, March 2015
- Ghimire, N. J.; Luo, Yongkang; Neupane, M.
- Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, Vol. 27, Issue 15
Superconducting proximity effect and Majorana fermions at the surface of a topological insulator
text, January 2007
- Fu, Liang; Kane, C. L.
- arXiv
Josephson supercurrent through a topological insulator surface state
text, January 2011
- Veldhorst, M.; Snelder, M.; Hoek, M.
- arXiv
New directions in the pursuit of Majorana fermions in solid state systems
text, January 2012
- Alicea, Jason
- arXiv
Josephson supercurrent through the topological surface states of strained bulk HgTe
text, January 2013
- Oostinga, Jeroen B.; Maier, Luis; Schueffelgen, Peter
- arXiv
Evidence for an anomalous current phase relation in topological insulator Josephson junctions
text, January 2013
- Kurter, C.; Finck, A. D. K.; Hor, Y. S.
- arXiv
Hard gap in epitaxial semiconductor-superconductor nanowires
text, January 2014
- Chang, W.; Albrecht, S. M.; Jespersen, T. S.
- arXiv
Electron-hole compensation effect between topologically trivial electrons and nontrivial holes in NbAs
text, January 2015
- Luo, Yongkang; Ghimire, N. J.; Wartenbe, M.
- arXiv
Works referencing / citing this record:
Quantum limit transport and destruction of the Weyl nodes in TaAs
journal, June 2018
- Ramshaw, B. J.; Modic, K. A.; Shekhter, Arkady
- Nature Communications, Vol. 9, Issue 1
Proximity-induced surface superconductivity in Dirac semimetal Cd3As2
journal, May 2019
- Huang, Ce; Zhou, Benjamin T.; Zhang, Huiqin
- Nature Communications, Vol. 10, Issue 1
Ultrahigh conductivity in Weyl semimetal NbAs nanobelts
journal, March 2019
- Zhang, Cheng; Ni, Zhuoliang; Zhang, Jinglei
- Nature Materials, Vol. 18, Issue 5
Magneto-resistance in pristine and irradiated TaAs 2
journal, April 2019
- Harimohan, V.; Bharathi, A.; Rajaraman, R.
- AIP Advances, Vol. 9, Issue 4
Large surface conductance and superconductivity in topological insulator microstructures
journal, October 2019
- Li, Yangmu; Wu, Jie; Camino, Fernando
- Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 115, Issue 17
Superconductivity in Weyl Semimetal NbP: Bulk vs. Surface
journal, September 2019
- Baenitz, M.; Schmidt, M.; Suess, V.
- Journal of Physics: Conference Series, Vol. 1293
Nonlocal transport in superconducting heterostructures based on Weyl semimetals
journal, August 2019
- Li, Hai; Ouyang, Gang
- Physical Review B, Vol. 100, Issue 8
Resolving different pairing states in Weyl superconductors through the single-particle spectrum
journal, July 2018
- Zhou, Tao; Gao, Yi; Wang, Z. D.
- Physical Review B, Vol. 98, Issue 2
Strain-engineered Majorana zero energy modes and Josephson state in black phosphorus
journal, August 2018
- Alidoust, Mohammad; Willatzen, Morten; Jauho, Antti-Pekka
- Physical Review B, Vol. 98, Issue 8
Orbital effect and weak localization in the longitudinal magnetoresistance of Weyl semimetals NbP, NbAs, TaP, and TaAs
journal, March 2020
- Naumann, M.; Arnold, F.; Bachmann, M. D.
- Physical Review Materials, Vol. 4, Issue 3
Superconductivity in Weyl semimetal NbP: Bulk vs. surface
text, January 2019
- Baenitz, M.; Schmidt, M.; Suess, V.
- Freie Universität Berlin
Quantum limit transport and destruction of the Weyl nodes in TaAs
text, January 2017
- Ramshaw, B. J.; Modic, K. A.; Shekhter, Arkady
- arXiv
Self-biased current, magnetic interference response, and superconducting vortices in tilted Weyl semimetals with disorder
text, January 2018
- Alidoust, Mohammad
- arXiv
Orbital effect and weak localization physics in the longitudinal magnetoresistance of the Weyl semimetals NbP, NbAs, TaP and TaAs
text, January 2019
- Naumann, M.; Arnold, F.; Bachmann, M. D.
- arXiv
Proximity-induced surface superconductivity in Dirac semimetal Cd3As2
journal, May 2019
- Huang, Ce; Zhou, Benjamin T.; Zhang, Huiqin
- Nature Communications, Vol. 10, Issue 1