Two-dimensional topological superconductivity candidate in a van der Waals layered material
Jing‐Yang You, Bo Gu, Gang Su, Yuan Ping Feng
Abstract
Two-dimensional (2D) topological superconductors are highly desired because they not only offer opportunities for exploring novel exotic quantum physics but also possess potential applications in quantum computation. However, there are few reports about 2D superconductors, let alone topological superconductors. Here, we find a 2D monolayer ${\mathrm{W}}_{2}{\mathrm{N}}_{3}$, which can be exfoliated from its real van der Waals bulk material with much lower exfoliation energy than ${\mathrm{MoS}}_{2}$, to be a topological metal with exotic topological states at different energy levels. Owing to the Van Hove singularities, the density of states near the Fermi level are high, making the monolayer a compensate metal. Moreover, the monolayer ${\mathrm{W}}_{2}{\mathrm{N}}_{3}$ is unveiled to be a superconductor with the superconducting transition temperature ${T}_{C}$ $\ensuremath{\sim}$ 22 K and a superconducting gap of about 5 meV based on the anisotropic Migdal-Eliashberg formalism, arising from the strong electron-phonon coupling around the $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}$ point, and the 2D superconductor is phonon mediated and fits the BCS mechanism with an Ising-type pairing. Because of the strong electron and lattice coupling, the monolayer displays a non-Fermi liquid behavior in its normal states at temperatures lower than 80 K, where the specific heat exhibits ${T}^{3}$ behavior and the Wiedemann-Franz law is dramatically violated. Our findings not only provide a platform to study the emergent phenomena in 2D topological superconductors, but also open a door to discover more 2D high-temperature topological superconductors in van der Waals materials.