Possible Electric-Field-Induced Superconducting States in Doped Silicene

• Published in: Scientific reports 2015-02, Vol.5 (1), p.8203-8203, Article 8203
• Main Authors: Zhang, Li-Da, Yang, Fan, Yao, Yugui
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 639/766/119/1003; 639/766/119/2795; Electric fields; Humanities and Social Sciences; multidisciplinary; Phase transitions; Science; Temperature effects
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/srep08203

Silicene has been synthesized recently, with experimental evidence showing possible superconductivity in the doped case. The noncoplanar low-buckled structure of this material inspires us to study the pairing symmetry of the doped system under a perpendicular external electric field. Our study reveals that the electric field induces an interesting quantum phase transition from the singlet chiral d + id ′-wave superconducting phase to the triplet f -wave one. The emergence of the f -wave pairing results from the sublattice-symmetry-breaking caused by the electric field and the ferromagnetic-like intra-sublattice spin correlations at low dopings. Due to the enhanced density of states, the superconducting critical temperature of the system is enhanced by the electric field remarkably. Furthermore, we design a particular dc SQUID experiment to detect the quantum phase transition predicted here. Our results, if confirmed, will inject a new vitality to the familiar Si-based industry through adopting doped silicene as a tunable platform to study different types of exotic unconventional superconductivities.