Superconductivity in CuxBi2Se3 and its implications for pairing in the undoped topological insulator

Y S Hor; A J Williams; J G Checkelsky; P Roushan; J Seo; Q Xu; H W Zandbergen; A Yazdani; N P Ong; R J Cava

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.057001

Superconductivity in CuxBi2Se3 and its implications for pairing in the undoped topological insulator

Phys Rev Lett. 2010 Feb 5;104(5):057001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.057001. Epub 2010 Feb 1.

Authors

Y S Hor¹, A J Williams, J G Checkelsky, P Roushan, J Seo, Q Xu, H W Zandbergen, A Yazdani, N P Ong, R J Cava

Affiliation

¹ Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA.

PMID: 20366785
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.057001

Abstract

Bi2Se3 is one of a handful of known topological insulators. Here we show that copper intercalation in the van der Waals gaps between the Bi2Se3 layers, yielding an electron concentration of approximately 2x10{20} cm{-3}, results in superconductivity at 3.8 K in CuxBi2Se3 for 0.12<or=x<or=0.15. This demonstrates that Cooper pairing is possible in Bi2Se3 at accessible temperatures, with implications for studying the physics of topological insulators and potential devices.