English

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

Superconductivity 2023-04-13 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Materials Science

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 WTe2_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 TdT_d-MoTe2_2 simultaneously exhibits ferroelectric switching and superconductivity. Remarkably, a field-driven, first-order superconductor-to-normal transition is observed at its ferroelectric transition. Bilayer TdT_d-MoTe2_2 also has a maximum in its superconducting transition temperature (TcT_\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 TcT_\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.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2304.05443,
  title  = {Coupled Ferroelectricity and Superconductivity in Bilayer $T_d$-MoTe$_2$},
  author = {Apoorv Jindal and Amartyajyoti Saha and Zizhong Li and Takashi Taniguchi and Kenji Watanabe and James C. Hone and Turan Birol and Rafael M. Fernandes and Cory R. Dean and Abhay N. Pasupathy and Daniel A. Rhodes},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.05443},
  year   = {2023}
}