Abstract
Although the local resistivity of semiconducting silicon in its standard crystalline form can be changed by many orders of magnitude by doping with elements, superconductivity has so far never been achieved. Hybrid devices combining silicon’s semiconducting properties and superconductivity have therefore remained largely underdeveloped. Here we report that superconductivity can be induced when boron is locally introduced into silicon at concentrations above its equilibrium solubility. For sufficiently high boron doping (typically 100 p.p.m.) silicon becomes metallic1. We find that at a higher boron concentration of several per cent, achieved by gas immersion laser doping, silicon becomes superconducting. Electrical resistivity and magnetic susceptibility measurements show that boron-doped silicon (Si:B) made in this way is a superconductor below a transition temperature Tc ≈ 0.35 K, with a critical field of about 0.4 T. Ab initio calculations, corroborated by Raman measurements, strongly suggest that doping is substitutional. The calculated electron–phonon coupling strength is found to be consistent with a conventional phonon-mediated coupling mechanism2. Our findings will facilitate the fabrication of new silicon-based superconducting nanostructures and mesoscopic devices with high-quality interfaces.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Rent or buy this article
Prices vary by article type
from$1.95
to$39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Dai, P., Zhang, Y. & Sarachik, M. P. Critical conductivity exponent for Si:B. Phys. Rev. Lett. 66, 1914–1917 (1991)
Bardeen, J., Cooper, L. N. & Schrieffer, J. R. Theory of superconductivity. Phys. Rev. 108, 1175–1204 (1957)
Hein, R. A., Gibson, J. W., Mazelsky, R., Miller, R. C. & Hulm, J. K. Superconductivity in germanium telluride. Phys. Rev. Lett. 12, 320–322 (1964)
Schooley, J. F. et al. Dependence of the superconducting transition temperature on carrier concentration in semiconducting SrTiO3 . Phys. Rev. Lett. 14, 305–307 (1965)
Lasbley, A., Granger, R. & Rolland, S. High temperature superconducting behaviour in PbTe-Pb system. Solid State Commun. 13, 1045–1048 (1973)
Alekseyevsky, N. & Migunov, L. Investigation of metals at temperatures below 1°K. J. Phys. (USSR) 11, 95 (1947)
Buckel, W. & Wittig, J. Supraleitung von Germanium und Silizium unter hohem Druck. Phys. Lett. 17, 187–188 (1965)
Stepanov, G. N., Valyanskaya, T. V. & Yakovlev, E. N. Superconductivity of metallic silicon below the pressure of transition to metallic modification. Sov. Phys. Solid State 22, 292–293 (1980)
Chang, K. J. et al. Superconductivity in high-pressure metallic phases of Si. Phys. Rev. Lett. 54, 2375–2378 (1985)
Cohen, M. L. Superconductivity in many-valley semiconductors and in semimetals. Phys. Rev. 134, A511–A521 (1964)
Connétable, D. et al. Superconductivity in doped sp3 semiconductors: The case of the clathrates. Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 247001 (2003)
Boeri, L., Kortus, J. & Andersen, O. K. Three-dimensional MgB2-type superconductivity in hole-doped diamond. Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 237002 (2004)
Kawaji, H., Horie, H., Yamanaka, S. & Ishikawa, M. Superconductivity in the silicon clathrate compound (Na,Ba)xSi46 . Phys. Rev. Lett. 74, 1427–1429 (1995)
Ekimov, E. A. et al. Superconductivity in diamond. Nature 428, 542–545 (2004)
Yokoya, T. et al. Origin of the metallic properties of heavily boron-doped superconducting diamond. Nature 438, 647–650 (2005)
Sacépé, B. et al. Tunneling spectroscopy and vortex imaging in boron-doped diamond. Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 097006 (2006)
Kerrien, G. et al. Ultra-shallow, super-doped and box-like junctions realized by laser-induced doping. Appl. Surf. Sci. 186, 45–51 (2002)
Kerrien, G. et al. Gas immersion laser doping (GILD) for ultra-shallow junction formation. Thin Solid Films 453–454, 106–109 (2004)
Kerrien, G. et al. Optical characterization of laser-processed ultrashallow junctions. Appl. Surf. Sci. 208–209, 277–284 (2003)
Vailionis, A., Glass, G., Desjardins, P., Cahill, D. G. & Greene, J. E. Electrically active and inactive B lattice sites in ultrahighly B doped Si(001): An X-ray near-edge absorption fine-structure and high-resolution diffraction study. Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 4464–4467 (1999)
Eremets, M. I., Struzhkin, V. V., Mao, H.-k. & Hemley, R. J. Superconductivity in boron. Science 293, 272–274 (2001)
Tinkham, M. in Inhomogeneous Superconductors-1979 (eds Gubser, D. U., Francavilla, T. L., Laibowitz, J. R. & Wolf, S. A.) 1–12 (AIP Conf. Proc. Vol. 58, American Institute of Physics, 1980)
Werthamer, N. R., Helfand, E. & Hohenberg, P. C. Temperature and purity dependence of the superconducting critical field Hc2, III. Electron spin and spin-orbit effects. Phys. Rev. 147, 295–302 (1966)
Ting, C. S., Lee, T. K. & Quinn, J. J. Effective mass and g factor of interacting electrons in the surface inversion layer of silicon. Phys. Rev. Lett. 34, 870–874 (1975)
Kent, A. D., Kapitulnik, A. & Geballe, T. H. Hc2 spectroscopy of geometrical effects in La-S Films. Phys. Rev. B 36, 8827–8830 (1987)
Quateman, J. H. Tc suppression and critical fields in thin superconducting Nb films. Phys. Rev. B 34, 1948–1951 (1986)
Guyon, E., Meunier, F. & Thomson, R. S. Thickness dependence of κ2 and related problems for superconducting alloy films in strong fields. Phys. Rev. 156, 452–469 (1967)
Blase, X., Adessi & Connétable, D. Role of the dopant in the superconductivity of diamond. Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 237004 (2004)
Lee, K.-W. & Pickett, W. E. Superconductivity in boron-doped diamond. Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 237003 (2004)
Bustarret, E. et al. Dependence of the superconducting transition temperature on the doping level in single-crystalline diamond films. Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 237005 (2004)
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge J. Marcus, M. Sanquer and X. Jehl for access to their cryostats, as well as J. Pernot for discussions. Calculations were performed at the CNRS national supercomputing centre (IDRIS). Partial funding by the French ANR-05-BLAN programme is acknowledged. Author Contributions The samples were prepared by D.D. and J.B., and the calculations performed by E.Bo. and X.B. All other authors contributed to the physical characterization of the samples.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
Reprints and permissions information is available at www.nature.com/reprints. The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bustarret, E., Marcenat, C., Achatz, P. et al. Superconductivity in doped cubic silicon. Nature 444, 465–468 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05340
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05340
This article is cited by
-
Observation of Kondo condensation in a degenerately doped silicon metal
Nature Physics (2023)
-
Doped silicon’s challenging behaviour
Nature Physics (2023)
-
Defect engineering of silicon with ion pulses from laser acceleration
Communications Materials (2023)
-
Bipolar device fabrication using a scanning tunnelling microscope
Nature Electronics (2020)
-
InN superconducting phase transition
Scientific Reports (2019)
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.