W explore emergent phenomena induced by the superconducting proximity effect at the interface of a superconductor and a normal metal that possesses attractive characteristics such as a topological band structure or chiral or helical edge modes. Close attention is paid to the quality of the interface. We have used transfer stacking to make very transparent 2D-2D NbSe2/graphene junctions and demonstrated proximity-induced superconductivity in the surface states of a topological insulator/superconductor epitaxial film.  We are affilated with the Penn State NSF MRSEC center.

Publications:

C. Li, Y.-F. Zhao, A. Vera, O. Lesser, H. Yi, S. Kumari, Z. Yan, C. Dong, T. Bowen, K. Wang, H. Wang, J. L. Thompson, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, D. Reifsnyder Hickey, Y. Oreg, J. A. Robinson, C.-Z. Chang, J. Zhu, "Proximity-Induced Superconductivity in Epitaxial Topological Insulator/Graphene/Gallium Heterostructures", Nature Materials 22, 570–575 (2023).

See press release of MRI: “New material may offer key to solving quantum computing issue”.

See the News & Views of Nature Materials: "Atomic heteroepitaxy for topological superconductivity".

Jing Li, Han-Bing Leng, Hailong Fu, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Xin Liu, Chao-Xing Liu, J. Zhu, “The Superconducting Proximity Effect in a Transparent van der Waals Superconductor-Metal Junction”, Phys. Rev. B 101, 195405 (2020)

N. Briggs, et al. "Atomically thin half-van der Waals metals enabled by confinement heteroepitaxy". Nature Materials 18, 541, doi:10.1038/s41563-020-0631-x (2020).