Superconductivity in centrosymmetric topological superconductor candidate TaC
- 18 January 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by IOP Publishing in Superconductor Science and Technology
- Vol. 34 (3), 035025
- https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6668/abdcc3
Abstract
We report the synthesis and physical properties of the single crystals of TaC, which are proposed to hold topological band structure as a topological superconductor (TSC) candidate. Magnetization, resistivity and specific heat measurements are performed and indicate that TaC is bulk superconductor with critical temperature of 10.3 K. TaC is a strongly coupled type-II superconductor and the superconducting state can be well described by s-wave Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory with a single gap. The upper critical field (Hc2) of TaC shows linear temperature dependence, which is quite different from most conventional superconductors and isostructural NbC, which is proposed to manifest topological nodal-loops or type-II Dirac points as well as superconductivity. Our results suggest that TaC would be a new candidate for further research of TSCs.Keywords
Funding Information
- China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2020M670504)
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (11774399)
- National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFA0300604)
- Natural Science Foundation of Beijing Municipality (Z180008)
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