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Coupled Ferroelectricity and Superconductivity in Bilayer $T_d$-MoTe$_2$

Authors :
Apoorv Jindal
Amartyajyoti Saha
Zizhong Li
Takashi Taniguchi
Kenji Watanabe
James C. Hone
Turan Birol
Rafael M. Fernandes
Cory R. Dean
Abhay N. Pasupathy
Daniel A. Rhodes
Publication Year :
2023
Publisher :
arXiv, 2023.

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 (2D) semimetals such as WTe$_2$. 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 fields. Here we show that bilayer $T_d$-MoTe$_2$ simultaneously exhibits ferroelectric switching and superconductivity. Remarkably, a field-driven, first-order superconductor-to-normal transition is observed at its ferroelectric transition. Bilayer $T_d$-MoTe$_2$ also has a maximum in its superconducting transition temperature ($T_\textrm{c}$) 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 $T_\textrm{c}$ 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 2D superconductor is driven by an interband pairing interaction associated with nearly nested electron and hole Fermi pockets.

Details

Database :
OpenAIRE
Accession number :
edsair.doi.dedup.....8123f70392897a4ffc9b5dc6adcff807
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2304.05443