Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Originally published in Science Express on 30 April 2009
Science 5 June 2009:
Vol. 324. no. 5932, pp. 1314 - 1317
DOI: 10.1126/science.1170775
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Reports

Superconductivity at the Two-Dimensional Limit

Shengyong Qin, Jungdae Kim, Qian Niu, Chih-Kang Shih*

Superconductivity in the extreme two-dimensional limit is studied on ultrathin lead films down to two atomic layers, where only a single channel of quantum well states exists. Scanning tunneling spectroscopy reveals that local superconducting order remains robust until two atomic layers, where the transition temperature abruptly plunges to a lower value, depending sensitively on the exact atomic structure of the film. Our result shows that Cooper pairs can still form in the last two-dimensional channel of electron states, although their binding is strongly affected by the substrate.

Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: shih{at}physics.utexas.edu

Read the Full Text

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)