Mesoscopic superconductivity and high spin polarization coexisting at metallic point contacts on Weyl semimetal TaAs

Leena Aggarwal, Sirshendu Gayen, Shekhar Das, Ritesh Kumar, Vicky Süß, Claudia Felser, Chandra Shekhar and Goutam Sheet ()
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Leena Aggarwal: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali
Sirshendu Gayen: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali
Shekhar Das: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali
Ritesh Kumar: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali
Vicky Süß: Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids
Claudia Felser: Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids
Chandra Shekhar: Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids
Goutam Sheet: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract A Weyl semimetal is a topologically non-trivial phase of matter that hosts mass-less Weyl fermions, the particles that remained elusive for more than 80 years since their theoretical discovery. The Weyl semimetals exhibit unique transport properties and remarkably high surface spin polarization. Here we show that a mesoscopic superconducting phase with critical temperature Tc=7 K can be realized by forming metallic point contacts with silver (Ag) on single crystals of TaAs, while neither Ag nor TaAs are superconductors. Andreev reflection spectroscopy of such point contacts reveals a superconducting gap of 1.2 meV that coexists with a high transport spin polarization of 60% indicating a highly spin-polarized supercurrent flowing through the point contacts on TaAs. Therefore, apart from the discovery of a novel mesoscopic superconducting phase, our results also show that the point contacts on Weyl semimetals are potentially important for applications in spintronics.

Date: 2017
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DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13974

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