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Superconductivity in type-II Weyl-semimetal WTe2 induced by a normal metal contact
Journal
Journal of Applied Physics
Volume
129
Number
11
Pages / Article-Number
113903
Keywords
Weyl semimetal, superconductivity, topology
Abstract
WTe2 is a material with rich topological properties: it is a 2D topological insulator as a monolayer and a Weyl-semimetal and higher-order topological insulator in the bulk form. Inducing superconductivity in topological materials is a way to obtain topological superconductivity, which lays at the foundation for many proposals of fault tolerant quantum computing. Here, we demonstrate the emergence of superconductivity at the interface between WTe2 and the normal metal palladium. The superconductivity has a critical temperature of about 1.2 K. By studying the superconductivity in perpendicular magnetic field, we obtain the coherence length and the London penetration depth. These parameters correspond to a low Fermi velocity and a high density of states at the Fermi level. This hints to a possible origin of superconductivity due to the formation of flatbands. Furthermore, the critical in-plane magnetic field exceeds the Pauli limit, suggesting a non-trivial nature of the superconducting state.
