Superconductivity in Weyl Semimetal Candidate MoTe2

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of pressure-enhanced superconductivity in MoTe2, a Weyl semimetal candidate, with Tc increasing from 0.1 K to 8.2 K under pressure, revealing a dome-shaped phase diagram.

Contribution

It demonstrates that applying pressure significantly boosts the superconducting transition temperature in MoTe2, a topological semimetal, which was not previously known.

Findings

Superconductivity observed at Tc of 0.1 K in MoTe2.

Pressure increases Tc up to 8.2 K at 11.7 GPa.

Superconducting phase diagram exhibits a dome shape.

Abstract

In recent years, layered transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have attracted considerable attention because of their rich physics; for example, these materials exhibit superconductivity, charge density waves, and the valley Hall effect. As a result, TMDs have promising potential applications in electronics, catalysis, and spintronics. Despite the fact that the majority of related research focuses on semiconducting TMDs (e.g., MoS2), the characteristics of WTe2 are provoking strong interest in semimetallic TMDs with extremely large magnetoresistance, pressure-driven superconductivity, and the predicted Weyl semimetal (WSM) state. In this work, we investigate the sister compound of WTe2, MoTe2, which is also predicted to be a WSM and a quantum spin Hall insulator in bulk and monolayer form, respectively. We find that MoTe2 exhibits superconductivity with a resistive transition temperature Tc of 0.1 K. The application of a small pressure (such as 0.4 GPa) is shown to dramatically enhance the Tc, with a maximum value of 8.2 K being obtained at 11.7 GPa (a more than 80-fold increase in Tc). This yields a dome-shaped superconducting phase diagram. Further explorations into the nature of the superconductivity in this system may provide insights into the interplay between strong correlations and topological physics.