Controllable Superconductivity in Suspended van der Waals Materials

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how local strain and thermal effects can controllably modulate superconductivity in suspended NbSe2 layers, enabling reconfigurable superconducting states for advanced quantum device applications.

Contribution

It introduces a method to tune superconductivity in van der Waals materials via strain and thermal modulation, with detailed theoretical modeling and potential device implications.

Findings

Strain modulates critical temperature by up to 0.92 K.

Gate-tunable superconducting critical currents achieved.

Reconfigurable hysteretic transport with multistability observed.

Abstract

Tunable superconductors provide a versatile platform for advancing next-generation quantum technologies. Here, we demonstrate controllable superconductivity in suspended NbSe2 thin layers, achieved through local strain and thermal modulation of the superconducting state. Our results show that suspended NbSe2 structures enable strain modulation of the critical temperature by up to approximately 0.92 K (about 12.5% of the critical temperature) and allow the realization of gate-tunable superconducting critical currents. We further demonstrate configurable hysteretic transport characteristics exhibiting multistability and negative differential resistance, providing easily reconfigurable, spatially dependent superconducting states. These phenomena are well explained by calculations of electron-phonon coupling using density functional theory, together with time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau dynamics coupled to the thermal diffusion equation. Our work provides profound insight into strain and thermal modulation of van der Waals superconductors and opens new opportunities for tunable on-chip superconductor devices, integrated superconducting circuits, and quantum simulators.