Topological crystalline insulators represent a new state of matter, in which the electronic transport is governed by mirror-symmetry protected Dirac surface states. Due to the helical spin-polarization of these surface states, the proximity of topological crystalline matter to a nearby superconductor is predicted to induce unconventional superconductivity and thus to host Majorana physics. We report on the preparation and characterization of Nb-based superconducting quantum interference devices patterned on top of topological crystalline insulator SnTe thin films. The SnTe films show weak antilocalization and the weak links of the SQUID fully-gapped proximity induced superconductivity. Both properties give a coinciding coherence length of 120 nm. The SQUID oscillations induced by a magnetic field show 2π periodicity, possibly dominated by the bulk conductivity.
@article{arxiv.1706.10164,
title = {Proximity-induced superconductivity and quantum interference in topological crystalline insulator SnTe thin film devices},
author = {Robin-Pierre Klett and Joachim Schönle and Andreas Becker and Denis Dyck and Karsten Rott and Jan Haskenhoff and Jan Krieft and Torsten Hübner and Oliver Reimer and Chandra Shekhar and Jan-Michael Schmalhorst and Andreas Hütten and Claudia Felser and Wolfgang Wernsdorfer and Günter Reiss},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.10164},
year = {2018}
}