A thin film technology compatible with multilayer device fabrication is critical for exploring the potential of the 39-K superconductor magnesium diboride for superconducting electronics. Using a Hybrid Physical-Chemical Vapor Deposition (HPCVD) process, it is shown that the high Mg vapor pressure necessary to keep the MgB 2 phase thermodynamically stable can be achieved for the in situ growth of MgB 2 thin films. The films grow epitaxially on (0001) sapphire and (0001) 4H-SiC substrates and show a bulk-like T c of 39 K, a J c (4.2K) of 1.2 × 10 7 A/cm 2 in zero field, and a H c2 (0) of 29.2 T in parallel magnetic field. The surface is smooth with a root-mean-square roughness of 2.5 nm for MgB 2 films on SiC. This deposition method opens tremendous opportunities for superconducting electronics using MgB 2 .

Superconductivity involving topological Dirac electrons has recently been proposed as a platform between concepts in high-energy and condensed-matter physics. It has been predicted that supersymmetry and Majorana fermions, both of which remain elusive in particle physics, may be realized through emergent particles in these particular superconducting systems. Using artificially fabricated topological-insulator-superconductor heterostructures, we present direct spectroscopic evidence for the existence of Cooper pairing in a weakly interacting half Dirac gas. Our studies reveal that two dimensional topological superconductivity in a helical Dirac gas is distinctly di erent from that in an ordinary two-dimensional superconductor in terms of the spin degrees of freedom of electrons. We further show that the pairing of Dirac electrons can be suppressed by timereversal symmetry-breaking impurities, thereby removing the distinction. Our demonstration and momentum-space imaging of Cooper pairing in a half-Dirac-gas two-dimensional topological superconductor serve as a critically important platform for future testing of fundamental physics predictions such as emergent supersymmetry and topological quantum criticality. R ealization of novel superconductivity is one of the central themes in condensed matter physics in general 1-24 . Superconductivity is a collective phenomenon, where electrons moving to the opposite directions (±k) form dynamically bound pairs, resulting in a Cooper pair gas. In an ordinary superconductor, the conduction electrons that move along a certain direction have both spin-up and spin-down electrons available for the Cooper pairing. The superconductivity observed so far, including in the conventional s-wave BCS superconductors as well as the cuprate or heavy fermion d-wave superconductors, all share this property. Recently, the discovery of 3D topological insulators (TIs) in bismuth-based semiconducting compounds has attracted much interest in condensed matter physics. In these TI materials, the bulk has a full energy gap whereas the surface exhibits an odd number of Dirac-cone electronic states, where the spin of the surface electrons is uniquely locked to their momentum 1,2 . Therefore, at any given surface of a TI, the surface electrons moving in one direction (for example, +k) will have only spin-up electrons available whereas those of moving to −k have only spin-down electrons available. This is in contrast to the Fermi level electronic states in an ordinary superconductor. This distinction can give rise to a wide range of exotic physics. Recently, a number of theories have highlighted these possibilities from both the fundamental physics and applications point of view 4-10 . For example, both supersymmetry and Majorana fermions are interesting physics phenomena predicted in high-energy theories that remain unobserved in particle physics experiments. And it has been theoretically predicted, very recently, that such new physics can be realized in a condensed matter setting 4,6 , if superconductiv...

We have studied thermodynamics of the Mg-B system with the modeling technique CALPHAD using a computerized optimization procedure. Temperature-composition, pressure-composition, and pressure-temperature phase diagrams under different conditions are obtained. The results provide helpful insights into appropriate processing conditions for thin films of the superconducting phase, MgB 2 , including the identification of the pressure/temperature region for adsorption-controlled growth. Due to the high volatility of Mg, MgB 2 is thermodynamically stable only under fairly high Mg overpressures for likely growth temperatures. This constraint places severe temperature constraints on deposition techniques employing high vacuum conditions.

A quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) insulator coupled to an s-wave superconductor is predicted to harbor chiral Majorana modes. A recent experiment interprets the half-quantized two-terminal conductance plateau as evidence for these modes in a millimeter-size QAH-niobium hybrid device. However, non-Majorana mechanisms can also generate similar signatures, especially in disordered samples. Here, we studied similar hybrid devices with a well-controlled and transparent interface between the superconductor and the QAH insulator. When the devices are in the QAH state with well-aligned magnetization, the two-terminal conductance is always half-quantized. Our experiment provides a comprehensive understanding of the superconducting proximity effect observed in QAH-superconductor hybrid devices and shows that the half-quantized conductance plateau is unlikely to be induced by chiral Majorana fermions in samples with a highly transparent interface.