Coexistence of Superconductivity and Ferromagnetism in CrTe₂/FeTe Heterostructures

In this work, we employed molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) to synthesize the 1T-CrTe₂/FeTe heterostructures. 1T-CrTe₂ is a two-dimensional van der Waals ferromagnet with Curie temperature up to room temperature, while FeTe is a non-superconducting antiferromagnetic iron chalcogenide. Through electrical transport measurements, we observed a sharp superconducting phase transition with a zero-resistance T_c ~11 K. The ferromagnetism property of the CrTe₂ layer is confirmed by the appearance of the non-zero anomalous Hall traces at temperatures up to 150 K. These observations strongly indicate the coexistence of superconductivity and ferromagnetism in our MBE-grown CrTe₂/FeTe heterostructures. We systematically investigated the CrTe₂ and FeTe thickness dependence of the induced superconductivity and ferromagnetism. We found the superconductivity persists even as the CrTe₂ and FeTe layers are scaled down to a few atomic layers. The successful synthesis of CrTe₂/FeTe heterostructures with atomically sharp interfaces provides a novel platform for studying the interplay between superconductivity and magnetism.