2018/08/29 by M. R. van Delft, van Delft, M. R., S. Pezzini +12
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #Graphene research and applications #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con) #Topological Materials and Phenomena #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1808.09702
17 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2018/08/29 · openalex publication_date 2018/08/29 · arxiv updated 2018/08/30 · openalex created_date 2018/09/07 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The motivation to search for signatures of superconductivity in Weyl semi-metals and other topological phases lies in their potential for hosting exotic phenomena such as nonzero-momentum pairing or the Majorana fermion, a viable candidate for the ultimate realization of a scalable quantum computer. Until now, however, all known reports of superconductivity in Weyl semimetals have arisen through surface contact with a sharp tip, focused ion-beam surface treatment or the application of high pressures. Here, we demonstrate the observation of superconductivity in single crystals, even an as-grown crystal, of the Weyl semi-metal tantalum phosphide (TaP), at ambient pressure. A superconducting transition temperature, Tc, varying between 1.7 and 5.3 K, is observed in different samples, both as-grown and microscopic samples processed with focused ion beam (FIB) etching. Our data show that the superconductivity present in the as-grown crystal is inhomogeneous yet exists in the bulk. For samples fabricated with FIB, we observe, in addition to the bulk superconductivity, a second superconducting state that resides on the sample surface. Through measurements of the characteristic fields as a function of temperature and angle, we are able to confirm the dimensionality of the two distinct superconducting phases.