Drastic enhancement of the superconducting temperature in type-II Weyl semimetal candidate MoTe$_2$ via biaxial strain

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that applying biaxial strain to MoTe$_2$ significantly increases its superconducting temperature and expands its superconducting phase, offering a simple method to tune electronic properties in quantum materials.

Contribution

We introduce a straightforward technique using differential thermal expansion to apply biaxial strain, dramatically enhancing the superconducting temperature of MoTe$_2$ by five times.

Findings

Tc of MoTe$_2$ increased five-fold under biaxial strain

Superconducting phase region on H-T diagram expanded

Magnetotransport data enabled detailed study of Hc2 and anisotropy

Abstract

Type-II Weyl semimetal candidate MoTe$_2$, which superconducts at T_c~0.1 K, is one of the promising candidates for realizing topological superconductivity. However, the exceedingly low $T_c$ is associated with a small upper critical field ($H_{c2}$), implying a fragile superconducting phase that only exists on a small region of the $H$-$T$ phase diagram. Here, we describe a simple and versatile approach based on the differential thermal expansion between dissimilar materials to subject a thin single crystalline MoTe$_2$ to biaxial strain. With this approach, we successfully enhance the $T_c$ of MoTe$_2$ five-fold and consequently expand the superconducting region on the $H$-$T$ phase diagram significantly. To demonstrate the relative ease of studying the superconductivity in the biaxially strained MoTe$_2$, we further present the magnetotransport data, enabling the study of the temperature-dependent $H_{c2}$ and the anisotropy of the superconducting state which would otherwise be difficult to obtain in a free-standing MoTe$_2$. Our work shows that biaxial strain is an effective knob to tune the electronic properties of MoTe$_2$. Due to the simplicity of our methodology to apply biaxial strain, we anticipate its direct applicability to a wider class of quantum materials.