Proximity effect in PbTe-Pb hybrid nanowire Josephson junctions
Zitong Zhang, Wenyu Song, Yichun Gao, Yuhao Wang, Zehao Yu, Shuai Yang, Yuying Jiang, Wentao Miao, Ruidong Li, Fangting Chen, Zuhan Geng, Qinghua Zhang, Fanqi Meng, Ting Lin, Lin Gu, Kejing Zhu, Yunyi Zang, Lin Li, Runan Shang, Xiao Feng, Qi-Kun Xue, Ke He, Hao Zhang
Abstract
Semiconductor-superconductor hybrid nanowires are a leading material platform for the realization of Majorana zero modes. The semiconductors in previous studies are dominantly InAs or InSb. In this paper, we show the induced superconductivity in PbTe nanowires epitaxially coupled to a superconductor Pb. The Josephson junction devices based on this hybrid reveal a gate-tunable supercurrent in the open regime and a hard superconducting gap in the tunneling regime. By demonstrating the superconducting proximity effect, our result can enable Majorana searches and other applications, such as gate-tunable qubits in a new material platform.