The diverse electronic properties of transition metal chalcogenides can be very sensitive to crystal imperfections. A new crystal growth technique, known as horizontal flux transport, offers a route to improved crystal quality. By refining this technique and applying it to the topological semimetal WTe2, we achieved crystals with an order of magnitude less disorder as determined by electrical transport and scanning tunneling microscopy measurements. At low temperatures these crystals exhibit the largest magnetoresistance reported in a metal. Exfoliated monolayers show quantum oscillations for the first time in the electrostatically doped metallic states, enabling determination of band degeneracies and the valley splitting induced by an electric field. Moreover, they exhibit a gated superconducting dome with a greatly enhanced critical temperature approaching 1.8 K. This advance opens up new avenues for employing WTe2 in topological electronics and gated superconducting devices, and promises comparable breakthroughs with other chalcogenides.
@article{arxiv.2604.23378,
title = {Record magnetoresistance, enhanced superconductivity, and fermiology in WTe2},
author = {Gianluca Delgado and Elliott Runburg and Chaowei Hu and Yuzhou Zhao and Jonathan M. DeStefano and Keng Tou Chu and Florie Mesple and Ellis Thompson and Kenji Watanabe and Takashi Taniguchi and Jihui Yang and Matthew Yankowitz and Xiaodong Xu and Jiun-Haw Chu and David H. Cobden},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.23378},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
12 pages including 3 figures, plus 13 of supplementary information