Coexistence of Robust Edge States and Superconductivity in Few-Layer Stanene

Abstract

High-quality stanene films have been actively pursued for realizing not only quantum spin Hall edge states without backscattering, but also intrinsic superconductivity, two central ingredients that may further endow the systems to host topological superconductivity. Yet to date, convincing evidence of topological edge states in stanene remains to be seen, let alone the coexistence of these two ingredients, owing to the bottleneck of growing high-quality stanene films. Here we fabricate one- to five-layer stanene films on the Bi(111) substrate and observe the robust edge states using scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy. We also measure distinct superconducting gaps on different-layered stanene films. Our first-principles calculations further show that hydrogen passivation plays a decisive role as a surfactant in improving the quality of the stanene films, while the Bi substrate endows the films with nontrivial topology. The coexistence of nontrivial topology and intrinsic superconductivity renders the system a promising candidate to become the simplest topological superconductor based on a single-element system.

Source-reported materials — not catalogue approval

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