Surface reconstruction and energy gap of superconducting V3Si(001)

Abstract

A yet unknown surface reconstruction of V3Si(001), which is most likely induced by carbon, is used to investigate the quasi-particle energy gap at the atomic scale by a cryogenic scanning tunneling microscope. The width of the gap was virtually not altered at and close to carbon impurities, nor did it change at different sites of the reconstructed surface lattice. A remarkable modification of the spectroscopic signature of the gap was induced, however, upon moving the tip of the microscope into controlled contact with the superconductor. Spectroscopy of the resulting normal-metal -- superconductor junction indicated the presence of Andreev reflections.

8 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Scanning tunneling spectroscopy of high-temperature superconductors
• Controlled Contact to a C60 Molecule
• Resonant electron heating and molecular phonon cooling in single C${}_{60}$ junctions
• Microwave Response of V3Si Single Crystals: Evidence for Two-Gap Superconductivity

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Electron and Cooper pair transport across a single magnetic molecule explored with a scanning tunneling microscope
• Multi-band conductivity and multi-gap superconductivity in V3Si from optical measurements on films at terahertz frequencies
• Surface structure and multigap superconductivity of V3Si (111) revealed by scanning tunneling microscopy
• Control of Andreev Reflection via a Single-Molecule Orbital