Both electrons and holes support superconductivity in monolayer MoTe₂
A gate switched the carrier type in the monolayer. Superconductivity set in near 7–8 K for either type.
Fangdong Tang, Jürgen H. Smet and colleagues cooled monolayer 1T′-MoTe₂ devices while using a gate to introduce either electrons or holes. Both types of carrier gave a superconducting onset near 7–8 K. Point-contact spectroscopy also found a gap consistent with stronger pairing than expected in the weak-coupling limit.
At SUSTech, Peipei Wang, Yuan Gan and Jian Lyu grew the bulk crystals and made preliminary measurements on bulk and multilayer samples. Liyuan Zhang coauthored the paper, published in Nano Letters. Jürgen H. Smet is the corresponding author.