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Updated: Jun 5, 2025

Fabricating van der Waals Heterostructures with Precise Rotational Alignment
Published on: July 5, 2019
Tunable Mirror-Symmetric Type-III Ising Superconductivity in Atomically-Thin Natural Van der Waals Heterostructures
Xikang Sun1, Zhengkuan Deng1, Yichen Yang2
1School of Physics, and State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials and Advanced Semiconductor Materials, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China.
Researchers discovered a novel 2D superconductor in van der Waals heterostructures. This material exhibits a unique Ising pairing state protected by mirror symmetry, showing enhanced critical temperature with in-plane magnetic fields.
Area of Science:
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Materials Science
- Solid-State Physics
Background:
- Van der Waals (vdW) crystals with strong spin-orbit coupling (SOC) are promising for exploring unconventional 2D superconductors.
- The interplay of SOC with symmetries, correlations, and disorders influences emergent pairing states.
Purpose of the Study:
- To report a distinct mirror-symmetry protected Ising pairing state in vdW heterostructures (vdWH) of SnSe and 1H-TaSe2 monolayers.
- To investigate the influence of crystalline symmetries and charge-density-wave (CDW) transitions on superconducting pairing mechanisms.
Main Methods:
- Fabrication and characterization of natural vdW heterostructures (vdWH) of interweaving tetragonal SnSe and trigonal 1H-TaSe2 monolayers.
- Experimental investigation of superconducting properties, including critical temperature (Tc) dependence on in-plane magnetic fields (B‖).
- Theoretical analysis of pairing states, considering mirror symmetry protection and lattice interlocking effects.
Main Results:
- A distinct mirror-symmetry protected Ising pairing state with unprecedented Γ- and M-valley symmetries was observed.
- Unidirectional lattice interlocking suppresses K-valley Ising pairing via incommensurate charge-density-wave (CDW) transitions.
- Mirror-symmetric vdWHs exhibit anomalous B‖-controlled Tc enhancements, absent in Mz-broken multilayer systems.
Conclusions:
- The study reveals a mirror symmetry-protected type-III Ising state in the inversion asymmetric lattice of 1H-TaSe2.
- This state is predicted to be a mixture of spin-singlet and spin-triplet pairing.
- The findings highlight the crucial role of mirror symmetry in stabilizing novel superconducting states in 2D materials.
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