Superfluid response of an atomically thin, gate-tuned van der Waals superconductor

TL;DR

This study directly measures the superfluid response in atomically thin, gate-tuned MoS₂ superconductors, revealing disorder effects and deviations from BCS theory, thus advancing understanding of 2D superconductivity.

Contribution

It introduces local magnetic probe measurements for vdW superconductors, providing new insights into their superfluid response and disorder effects.

Findings

Superfluid stiffness increases monotonically with gate voltage.

Evidence of Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition in some devices.

Superfluid response deviates from simple BCS behavior.

Abstract

A growing number of two-dimensional superconductors are being discovered in the family of layered van der Waals (vdW) materials. Due to small sample volume, their characterization has been largely limited to electrical transport measurements. As a consequence, characterization of the diamagnetic response of the superfluid to an applied magnetic field, a defining property of any superconductor, has been lacking. Here, we use a local magnetic probe to directly measure the superfluid response of the tunable, gate-induced superconducting state in MoS$_2$. We find that the backgate changes the superconducting transition temperature non-monotonically whereas the superfluid stiffness at low temperature and the normal state conductivity monotonically increase with backgate voltage. In some devices, we find direct signatures in agreement with a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition, whereas in others we find a broadened, shallow onset of the superfluid response. We show that the observed behavior is consistent with disorder playing an important role in determining the superconducting properties in superconducting MoS$_2$. Our work demonstrates that magnetic property measurements are within reach for vdW superconductors and reveals that the superfluid response significantly deviates from simple BCS-like behavior.