Emergent superconductivity and non-reciprocal transport in a van der Waals Dirac semimetal/antiferromagnet heterostructure
Abstract
We investigate emergent superconductivity and non-reciprocal transport (magnetochiral anisotropy, superconducting diode effect) at the heterointerface of two non-superconducting van der Waals (vdW) materials, the Dirac semimetal ZrTe2 and the antiferromagnetic iron chalcogenide FeTe, grown using molecular beam epitaxy. We show from electrical transport measurements that two-dimensional (2D) superconductivity arises at the heterointerface below a critical temperature Tc 10K. In the superconducting transition region, non-reciprocal transport, characterized by the magneto-chiral anisotropy, exhibits a magnitude comparable to that observed in topological insulators, and is enhanced by a factor of three when the heterostructure is capped with a 2D vdW ferromagnet (CrTe2). Below Tc, the superconducting diode effect exhibits an efficiency of 29%. With strong spin-orbit coupling in ZrTe2, these epitaxial heterostructures provide an attractive epitaxial vdW platform for exploring unconventional superconductivity in Dirac semimetals and for developing non-reciprocal devices for superconducting electronics.
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