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arXiv · 1811.12129

Evidence of Interfacial Topological Superconductivity on the Topological Semimetal Tungsten Carbide Induced by Metal Deposition

Abstract

Interfaces between materials with different electronic ground states have become powerful platforms for creating and controlling novel quantum states of matter, in which inversion symmetry breaking and other effects at the interface may introduce additional electronic states. Among the emergent phenomena, superconductivity is of particular interest. In this work, by depositing metal films on a newly identified topological semimetal tungsten carbide (WC) single crystal, we have obtained interfacial topological superconductivity evidenced from soft point contact spectroscopy. This very robust phenomenon has been demonstrated for a wide range of Metal/WC interfaces, involving both non-magnetic and ferromagnetic films, and the superconducting transition temperatures is surprisingly insensitive to the magnetism of thin films, suggesting a spin-triplet pairing superconducting state. The results offer an opportunity to implement topological superconductivity using convenient thin film coating method.

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W. L. Zhu, X. Y. Hou, J. Li, Y. F. Huang, S. Zhang, J. B. He, D. Chen, M. D. Zhang, H. X. Yang, Z. A. Ren, J. P. Hu, L. Shan, G. F. Chen. 2018-11-29. Evidence of Interfacial Topological Superconductivity on the Topological Semimetal Tungsten Carbide Induced by Metal Deposition. https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201907970

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