2016/03/17 by Efrén Navarro‐Moratalla, Efrén Navarro-Moratalla, Joshua O. Island +19 · 5 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #2D Materials and Applications #Computer science #Condensed matter physics #Curse of dimensionality #Electronic and Structural Properties of Oxides #Limit (mathematics) #Materials science #Nanotechnology #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Superconductivity #Surface and Thin Film Phenomena #Tantalum #Work (physics) #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/ncomms11043
published as Nature Communications, 7, 11043 (2016) · 54 pages
openalex publication_date 2016/03/17 · arxiv created 2016/04/20 · arxiv updated 2016/04/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The ability to exfoliate layered materials down to the single layer limit has presented the opportunity to understand how a gradual reduction in dimensionality affects the properties of bulk materials. Here we use this top-down approach to address the problem of superconductivity in the two-dimensional limit. The transport properties of electronic devices based on 2H tantalum disulfide flakes of different thicknesses are presented. We observe that superconductivity persists down to the thinnest layer investigated (3.5 nm), and interestingly, we find a pronounced enhancement in the critical temperature from 0.5 to 2.2 K as the layers are thinned down. In addition, we propose a tight-binding model, which allows us to attribute this phenomenon to an enhancement of the effective electron-phonon coupling constant. This work provides evidence that reducing the dimensionality can strengthen superconductivity as opposed to the weakening effect that has been reported in other 2D materials so far.