The family of the endohedral gallide cluster compounds recently emerged as a new family of superconductors which is expected to host systems displaying unconventional physics. Mo8Ga41 is an important member of this family which shows relatively large Tc∼ 10 K and has shown indications of strong electron-phonon coupling and multi-band superconductivity. Here, through direct measurement of superconducting energy gap by scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) we demonstrate the existence of two distinct superconducting gaps of magnitude 0.85 meV and 1.6 meV respectively in Mo8Ga41. Both the gaps are seen to be conventional in nature as they evolve systematically with temperature as per the predictions of BCS theory. Our band structure calculations reveal that only two specific Mo sites in an unit cell contribute to superconductivity where only dxz/dyz and dx2−y2 orbitals have strong contributions. Our analysis indicates that the site-elective contribution govern the two-gap nature of superconductivity in Mo8Ga41.
@article{arxiv.1810.01914,
title = {Multi-band superconductivity driven by a site-selective mechanism in Mo$_8$Ga$_{41}$},
author = {Anshu Sirohi and Surabhi Saha and Prakriti Neha and Shekhar Das and Satyabrata Patnaik and Tanmoy Das and Goutam Sheet},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.01914},
year = {2019}
}