Unusual nature of fully-gapped superconductivity in In-doped SnTe

Abstract

The superconductor Sn_{1-x}In_{x}Te is a doped topological crystalline insulator and has become important as a candidate topological superconductor, but its superconducting phase diagram is poorly understood. By measuring about 50 samples of high-quality, vapor-grown single crystals, we found that the dependence of the superconducting transition temperature Tc on the In content x presents a qualitative change across the critical doping xc ~ 3.8%, at which a structural phase transition takes place. Intriguingly, in the ferroelectric rhombohedral phase below the critical doping, Tc is found to be strongly ENHANCED with impurity scattering. It appears that the nature of electron pairing changes across xc in Sn_{1-x}In_{x}Te.