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Coupled ferroelectricity and superconductivity in bilayer Td-MoTe2

Nature volume 613, pages 48–52 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Achieving electrostatic control of quantum phases is at the frontier of condensed matter research. Recent investigations have revealed superconductivity tunable by electrostatic doping in twisted graphene heterostructures and in two-dimensional semimetals such as WTe2 (refs. 1,2,3,4,5). Some of these systems have a polar crystal structure that gives rise to ferroelectricity, in which the interlayer polarization exhibits bistability driven by external electric fields6,7,8. Here we show that bilayer Td-MoTe2 simultaneously exhibits ferroelectric switching and superconductivity. Notably, a field-driven, first-order superconductor-to-normal transition is observed at its ferroelectric transition. Bilayer Td-MoTe2 also has a maximum in its superconducting transition temperature (Tc) as a function of carrier density and temperature, allowing independent control of the superconducting state as a function of both doping and polarization. We find that the maximum Tc is concomitant with compensated electron and hole carrier densities and vanishes when one of the Fermi pockets disappears with doping. We argue that this unusual polarization-sensitive two-dimensional superconductor is driven by an interband pairing interaction associated with nearly nested electron and hole Fermi pockets.

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Fig. 1: Electronic properties of bilayer Td-MoTe2.
Fig. 2: Coupled ferroelectricity and superconductivity in bilayer Td-MoTe2.
Fig. 3: Doping-dependent superconducting properties of bilayer Td-MoTe2.
Fig. 4: Fermi surface nesting and superconductivity in MoTe2.

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Data availability

Datasets used to construct plots and support other findings in this article are available from the corresponding authors upon request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Millis for discussions. The experimental portion of this research was primarily supported by the NSF MRSEC program through Columbia University in the Center for Precision-Assembled Quantum Materials under award no. DMR-2011738 (fabrication, measurements and data analysis). A.S., T.B. and R.M.F. (theoretical modelling) were supported by the National Science Foundation through the University of Minnesota MRSEC (grant no. DMR-2011401). D.A.R. and Z.L. (growth, measurements and data analysis) were supported by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education with funding from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. D.A.R. was partially supported by the NSF MRSEC program through the University of Wisconsin-Madison under award no. DMR-1720415. A.N.P. acknowledges salary support from the NSF via grant no. DMR-2004691, from AFOSR via grant no. FA9550-21-1-0378 by the ARO-MURI program with award no. W911NF-21-1-0327. K.W. and T.T. acknowledge support from the Element Strategy Initiative conducted by the MEXT, Japan (grant no. JPMXP0112101001) and JSPS KAKENHI (grant nos. 19H05790, 20H00354 and 21H05233).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Apoorv Jindal, Cory R. Dean & Abhay N. Pasupathy

  2. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Amartyajyoti Saha & Rafael M. Fernandes

  3. Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Amartyajyoti Saha & Turan Birol

  4. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

    Zizhong Li & Daniel A. Rhodes

  5. National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan

    Takashi Taniguchi & Kenji Watanabe

  6. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    James C. Hone

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Contributions

The experiment was designed by D.A.R., A.J. and A.N.P. Devices were fabricated by A.J., D.A.R. and Z.L. C.R.D., A.J. and D.A.R. performed the measurements and analysed the data. A.S. developed theoretical models and performed calculations supervised by T.B. and R.F.M. T.T. and K.W. supplied hBN single crystals. D.A.R. and J.C.H. synthesized MoTe2 single crystals. D.A.R., A.J. and A.N.P. wrote the manuscript with the input of all other authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Abhay N. Pasupathy or Daniel A. Rhodes.

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Nature thanks Yoichi Yanase, Kenji Yasuda and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Fig. 1 Superconducting dome observed in two other devices at D = 0 V/nm.

Limitations due to the dielectric strength of the hBN in these devices precluded us from reaching higher doping and, consequently, the formation of a complete superconducting dome.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Doping dependent T-linear behaviour of  bilayer Td - MoTe2.

a, Colour plot of resistance vs temperature and doping. Doping dependent superconducting critical temperature (from Fig. 3a) is superimposed on the colour plot with the associated temperature scale on the right axis. b, Diagram indicating regions of T2 and T-linear behaviour. c,Rxx versus temperature for various dopings, as indicated at the top of each curve in values of 1013 cm−2. Blue (red) dashed lines indicate quadratic (linear) fits to the data.

Extended Data Fig. 3 T-linear behaviour observed in D3.

a, Colour plot of resistance vs temperature and doping. Doping dependent superconducting critical temperature (from Extended Data Fig. 2) is superimposed on the colour plot. b,Rxx versus temperature for various dopings. Blue (red) dashed lines indicate quadratic (linear) fits to the data.

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Supplementary Information

This file contains eight figures and a table that are used as supporting information for the main text figures and explanations.

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Jindal, A., Saha, A., Li, Z. et al. Coupled ferroelectricity and superconductivity in bilayer Td-MoTe2. Nature 613, 48–52 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05521-3

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