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Published on: July 8, 2021
Superconductivity in Noncentrosymmetric Rhombohedral NbSe_{2}
Zhengxian Li1, Xiaoyu Shen1, Shaozheng Wang1
1Shanghai Jiao Tong University, State Key Laboratory of Micro-nano Engineering Science, Key Laboratory of Artificial Structures and Quantum Control (Ministry of Education), Tsung-Dao Lee Institute and School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai, China.
Abstract:
Crystal stacking offers a powerful yet underexplored route to engineer symmetry in layered superconductors. Here we report superconductivity in rhombohedral-stacked NbSe_{2} (3R-NbSe_{2}), a noncentrosymmetric polytype in which global inversion symmetry is removed by stacking alone. Using comprehensive structural, transport, magnetic, and thermodynamic measurements, we establish superconductivity as a bulk property of the 3R phase and find that the in-plane upper critical field exceeds the Pauli paramagnetic limit, indicating the persistence of strong Ising-type spin-orbit coupling. Unlike the thickness-dependent superconductivity in centrosymmetric 2H-NbSe_{2}, the superconducting transition temperature in 3R-NbSe_{2} shows little dependence on the layer number but exhibits an unusually strong sensitivity to disorder. We further observe strongly enhanced nonlinear optical and electrical responses near the superconducting transition, consistent with stacking-induced inversion-symmetry breaking. Our results identify 3R-NbSe_{2} as a single-phase platform in which stacking engineering reshapes superconductivity and enables nonlinear transport phenomena in layered materials.
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