A new superconductor derived from topological insulator heterostructure

Abstract

Topological superconductors (TSCs) are of significant current interest because they offer promising platforms for finding Majorana fermions. Here we report a new superconductor synthesized by intercalating Cu into a naturally-formed topological insulator (TI) heterostructure consisting of Bi2Se3 TI units separated by nontopological PbSe units. For the first time in a TI-based superconductor, the specific-heat behavior of this material suggests the occurrence of unconventional superconductivity with gap nodes. The existence of gap nodes in a strongly spin-orbit coupled superconductor would give rise to spin-split Andreev bound states that are the hallmark of topological superconductivity. Hence, this new superconductor emerges as an intriguing candidate TSC.

5 pages, 4 figures (paper proper) + 5 pages, 7 figures (supplemental material)

References in corpus (6)

• Classification of topological insulators and superconductors in three spatial dimensions
• Nearly Isotropic superconductivity in (Ba,K)Fe2As2
• Bulk superconducting phase with a full energy gap in the doped topological insulator Cu_xBi_2Se_3
• Odd-Parity Pairing and Topological Superconductivity in a Strongly Spin-Orbit Coupled Semiconductor
• Anisotropy of the Optimally-Doped Iron Pnictide Superconductor Ba(Fe0.926Co0.074)2As2
• Majorana Fermions in Nodal Superconductors: Gapless Topological Phase

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Topological surface states in nodal superconductors
• Nematic superconductivity in doped Bi2Se3 topological superconductors
• Exploring Topological Superconductivity in Topological Materials
• Superconducting doped topological materials
• Nano-mosaic of Topological Dirac States on the Surface of Pb5Bi24Se41 Observed by Nano-ARPES
• Helical Majorana surface states of strongly disordered topological superconductors with time-reversal symmetry
• Geometry-induced topological superconductivity
• Fermiology of possible topological superconductor Tl0.5Bi2Te3 derived from hole-doped topological insulator
• Low-temperature environments for quantum computation and quantum simulation