Emergent superconductivity and non-reciprocal transport in a van der Waals Dirac semimetal/antiferromagnet heterostructure

Saurav Islam; Max Stanley; Anthony Richardella; Seungjun Lee; Kalana D. Halanayake; Sandra Santhosh; Danielle Reifsnyder Hickey; Tony Low; Nitin Samarth

arXiv · 2504.20393

Emergent superconductivity and non-reciprocal transport in a van der Waals Dirac semimetal/antiferromagnet heterostructure

Saurav Islam·Max Stanley·Anthony Richardella·Seungjun Lee·Kalana D. Halanayake·Sandra Santhosh·Danielle Reifsnyder Hickey·Tony Low·Nitin Samarth

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Abstract

We investigate emergent superconductivity and non-reciprocal transport (magnetochiral anisotropy, superconducting diode effect) at the heterointerface of two non-superconducting van der Waals (vdW) materials, the Dirac semimetal ZrTe$_2$ and the antiferromagnetic iron chalcogenide FeTe, grown using molecular beam epitaxy. We show from electrical transport measurements that two-dimensional (2D) superconductivity arises at the heterointerface below a critical temperature $T_c \sim 10$~K. In the superconducting transition region, non-reciprocal transport, characterized by the magneto-chiral anisotropy, exhibits a magnitude comparable to that observed in topological insulators, and is enhanced by a factor of three when the heterostructure is capped with a 2D vdW ferromagnet (CrTe$_2$). Below $T_c$, the superconducting diode effect exhibits an efficiency of 29\%. With strong spin-orbit coupling in ZrTe$_2$, these epitaxial heterostructures provide an attractive epitaxial vdW platform for exploring unconventional superconductivity in Dirac semimetals and for developing non-reciprocal devices for superconducting electronics.

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Saurav Islam, Max Stanley, Anthony Richardella, Seungjun Lee, Kalana D. Halanayake, Sandra Santhosh, Danielle Reifsnyder Hickey, Tony Low, Nitin Samarth. 2025-04-29. Emergent superconductivity and non-reciprocal transport in a van der Waals Dirac semimetal/antiferromagnet heterostructure. https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.20393

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