Superconductivity in non-centrosymmetric rhombohedral NbSe<sub>2</sub>

ORAL

Abstract

The transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) host superconductivity across distinct polytypes with contrasting crystal symmetries and spin–orbit coupling (SOC) textures. Here we synthesize rhombohedral-stacked NbSe2 (3R-NbSe2) single crystals and establish their superconductivity in bulk and few-layer flakes. The superconducting transition temperature TC shows a linear scaling with the residual resistivity ratio (RRR) for RRR < 5, while shows no systematic dependence on thickness. The contrasting behavior compared to 2H phase indicates mixed-parity pairing enabled by inversion-symmetry breaking and antisymmetric SOC (ASOC) in rhombohedral stacking. In bulk and thin-layer 3R-NbSe2, the in-plane upper critical field Hc2 exceeds the Pauli limit, suggesting that the out-of-plane Ising-like SOC component remains effective in suppressing Zeeman pair breaking. For thin layers, the suppression of orbital depairing enhances Pauli limiting and the additional Rashba-type SOC allowed by broken inversion symmetry may enable finite-momentum pairing, consistent with FFLO-like transport signatures observed down to a pentalayer flake. Our results identify 3R-NbSe2 as a minimal, single-phase non-centrosymmetric superconductor where disorder acts as an efficient tuning knob and provide a platform to explore Pauli-limit violation, parity-mixed pairing, and possible nonreciprocal transport phenomena in TMDs superconductors.

*G.C. acknowledges support from NSF of China (grant nos. 12350005 and 12174248), National Key Research Program of China (grant nos. 2021YFA1400100 and 2020YFA0309000), and Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation Action Plan (grant no. 24LZ1401100). Z.X. acknowledges support from the postdoctoral fellowship program of CPSF under grant number GZC20241021.

Presenters

  • Zhengxian Li

    • Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ

Authors

  • Zhengxian Li

    • Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ
  • Xiaoyu Shen

    • Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ
  • Fanqi Yuan

    • Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ
  • Guorui Chen

    • Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ
    • School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China