Extrinsic and Intrinsic Anomalous Metallic States in Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Ising Superconductors

Nano Lett. 2021 Sep 22;21(18):7486-7494. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c01426. Epub 2021 Aug 30.

Abstract

The metallic ground state in two-dimensional (2D) superconductors has attracted much attention but is still under intense scrutiny. Especially, the measurements in the ultralow temperature region are challenging for 2D superconductors due to the sensitivity to external perturbations. In this work, the resistance saturation induced by external noise, named as the "extrinsic anomalous metallic state", is observed in 2D transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) superconductor 4Ha-TaSe2 nanodevices. However, with further decreasing temperature, credible evidence of the intrinsic anomalous metallic state is obtained by adequately filtering external radiation. Our work indicates that, at ultralow temperatures, the anomalous metallic state can be experimentally revealed as the quantum ground state in 2D crystalline TMD superconductors. Besides, Ising superconductivity revealed by ultrahigh in-plane critical field (Bc2∥) going beyond the Pauli paramagnetic limit (Bp) is detected in 4Ha-TaSe2, from the one-unit-cell device to the bulk situation, which might be due to the weak coupling between the TaSe2 submonolayers.

Keywords: Ising superconductivity; anomalous metallic state; phase diagram; transition metal dichalcogenide; two-dimensional.