Self-regulated growth of candidate topological superconducting parkerite by molecular beam epitaxy

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the self-regulated molecular beam epitaxy growth of high-quality Pd3Bi2Se2 thin films, a topological superconductor, revealing their structural and superconducting properties, and advancing the exploration of ternary chalcogenides.

Contribution

It introduces a novel self-regulated growth method for Pd3Bi2Se2 films, enabling high-quality epitaxial superconducting topological materials.

Findings

Films exhibit a superconducting transition at 800 mK.

Films are of high structural quality and stoichiometry is flux-independent.

Critical magnetic field measured at approximately 17.7 mT.

Abstract

Ternary chalcogenides such as the parkerites and shandites are a broad class of materials exhibiting rich diversity of transport and magnetic behavior as well as an array of topological phases including Weyl and Dirac nodes. However, they remain largely unexplored as high-quality epitaxial thin films. Here, we report the self-regulated growth of thin films of the strong spin-orbit coupled superconductor Pd3Bi2Se2 on SrTiO3 by molecular beam epitaxy. Films are found to grow in a self-regulated fashion, where, in excess Se, the temperature and relative flux ratio of Pd to Bi controls the formation of Pd3Bi2Se2 due to the combined volatility of Bi, Se, and Bi-Se bonded phases. The resulting films are shown to be of high structural quality, the stoichiometry is independent of the Pd:Bi and Se flux ratio and exhibit a superconducting transition temperature of 800 mK and critical field of 17.7 +/- 0.5 mT, as probed by transport as well as magnetometry. Understanding and navigating the growth of the chemically and structurally diverse classes of ternary chalcogenides opens a vast space for discovering new phenomena as well as enabling new applications.