2025/04/29 by Saurav Islam, Islam, Saurav, Max Stanley +15
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Graphene research and applications #Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) #Superconductivity in MgB2 and Alloys #Topological Materials and Phenomena #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2504.20393
openalex publication_date 2025/04/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/16 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28 · arxiv created 2026/08/02 · arxiv updated 2026/08/04
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 ZrTe2 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 Tc ∼ 10K. 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 (CrTe2). Below Tc, the superconducting diode effect exhibits an efficiency of 29%. With strong spin-orbit coupling in ZrTe2, 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.