Ultra-thin designer materials unlock quantum phenomena

Science Daily  December 17, 2020
Exotic states such as topological insulators, superconductors and quantum spin liquids are often challenging or impossible to create in a single material. The problem can be circumvented by deliberately selecting the combination of materials in heterostructures so that the desired physics emerges from interactions between the different components. An international team of researchers (Finland, Poland, Japan) used molecular-beam epitaxy to grow 2D islands of ferromagnetic chromium tribromide on superconducting niobium diselenide. They used low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy to reveal the signatures of one-dimensional Majorana edge modes. The fabricated 2D van der Waals heterostructure provides a high-quality, tunable system that can be readily integrated into device structures that use topological superconductivity. The layered heterostructures can be readily accessed by various external stimuli, potentially allowing external control of 2D topological superconductivity through electrical mechanical, chemical or optical means…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE

Electronic structure of CrBr3-NbSe2 heterostructures. Credit: Nature volume 588, pages424–428(2020)

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