Superconductivity in centrosymmetric topological superconductor candidate TaC

TL;DR

This study synthesizes and characterizes TaC single crystals, revealing it as a bulk superconductor with potential topological properties, making it a promising candidate for topological superconductivity research.

Contribution

It introduces TaC as a new candidate for topological superconductivity, with detailed physical property measurements supporting its potential topological nature.

Findings

TaC is a bulk superconductor with Tc of 10.3 K

Superconductivity in TaC is well described by s-wave BCS theory

Upper critical field shows linear temperature dependence

Abstract

We report the synthesis and physical properties of the single crystals of TaC, which are proposed to hold topological band structure as a topological superconductor (TSC) candidate. Magnetization, resistivity and specific heat measurements are performed and indicate that TaC is bulk superconductor with critical temperature of 10.3 K. TaC is a strongly coupled type-II superconductor and the superconducting state can be well described by s-wave Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory with a single gap. The upper critical field (Hc2) of TaC shows linear temperature dependence, which is quite different from most conventional superconductors and isostructural NbC, which is proposed to manifest topological nodal-loops or type-II Dirac points as well as superconductivity. Our results suggest that TaC would be a new candidate for further research of TSCs.