Metallic ground state in an ion-gated two-dimensional superconductor

Abstract

A 3D approach to make 2D superconductors: When the thickness of a superconducting film becomes comparable to the typical size of its electron pairs, its superconductivity enters a two-dimensional (2D) regime. Thinner films usually have higher amounts of disorder, making it difficult to isolate the 2D effects. To circumvent this limitation, Saito et al. induced charge carriers on the surface of the 3D insulator ZrNCl. This approach produced a clean superconducting layer thinner than the unit cell of the crystal. The superconducting state was extremely sensitive to the application of a perpendicular magnetic field, as expected for clean systems. Science , this issue p. 409