Abstract
Spin-helical Dirac Fermions at a doped topological insulator’s boundaries can support Majorana quasiparticles when coupled with s-wave superconductors, but in n-doped systems, the requisite induced Cooper pairing in topological states is often buried at heterointerfaces or complicated by degenerate coupling with bulk conduction carriers. Rarely probed are p-doped topological structures with nondegenerate Dirac and bulk valence bands at the Fermi level, which may foster long-range superconductivity without sacrificing Majorana physics. Using ultrahigh-resolution photoemission, we report proximity pairing with a large decay length in p-doped topological Sb2Te3 on superconducting Nb. Despite no momentum-space degeneracy, the topological and bulk states of Sb2Te3/Nb exhibit the same isotropic superconducting gaps at low temperatures. Our results unify principles for realizing accessible pairing in Dirac Fermions relevant to topological superconductivity.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 31323-31331 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | ACS Nano |
Volume | 18 |
Issue number | 45 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 12 Nov 2024 |
Keywords
- Proximity effects
- flip-chip method
- interband superconducting coherence
- p-doped topological insulators
- thin-film heterostructures
- topological superconductivity