Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Feb;590(7845):249-255.
doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-03192-0. Epub 2021 Feb 1.

Tunable strongly coupled superconductivity in magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene

Affiliations

Tunable strongly coupled superconductivity in magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene

Jeong Min Park et al. Nature. 2021 Feb.

Abstract

Moiré superlattices1,2 have recently emerged as a platform upon which correlated physics and superconductivity can be studied with unprecedented tunability3-6. Although correlated effects have been observed in several other moiré systems7-17, magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene remains the only one in which robust superconductivity has been reproducibly measured4-6. Here we realize a moiré superconductor in magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene (MATTG)18, which has better tunability of its electronic structure and superconducting properties than magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene. Measurements of the Hall effect and quantum oscillations as a function of density and electric field enable us to determine the tunable phase boundaries of the system in the normal metallic state. Zero-magnetic-field resistivity measurements reveal that the existence of superconductivity is intimately connected to the broken-symmetry phase that emerges from two carriers per moiré unit cell. We find that the superconducting phase is suppressed and bounded at the Van Hove singularities that partially surround the broken-symmetry phase, which is difficult to reconcile with weak-coupling Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory. Moreover, the extensive in situ tunability of our system allows us to reach the ultrastrong-coupling regime, characterized by a Ginzburg-Landau coherence length that reaches the average inter-particle distance, and very large TBKT/TF values, in excess of 0.1 (where TBKT and TF are the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition and Fermi temperatures, respectively). These observations suggest that MATTG can be electrically tuned close to the crossover to a two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate. Our results establish a family of tunable moiré superconductors that have the potential to revolutionize our fundamental understanding of and the applications for strongly coupled superconductivity.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Suárez Morell, E., Correa, J. D., Vargas, P., Pacheco, M. & Barticevic, Z. Flat bands in slightly twisted bilayer graphene: tight-binding calculations. Phys. Rev. B 82, 121407 (2010). - DOI
    1. Bistritzer, R. & MacDonald, A. H. Moiré bands in twisted double-layer graphene. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 108, 12233–12237 (2011). - DOI
    1. Cao, Y. et al. Correlated insulator behaviour at half-filling in magic-angle graphene superlattices. Nature 556, 80–84 (2018). - DOI
    1. Cao, Y. et al. Unconventional superconductivity in magic-angle graphene superlattices. Nature 556, 43–50 (2018). - DOI
    1. Yankowitz, M. et al. Tuning superconductivity in twisted bilayer graphene. Science 363, 1059–1064 (2019). - DOI

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources