Twisted cuprate van der Waals heterostructures with controlled Josephson coupling

• DOI: 10.1016/j.mattod.2023.06.007
• Publication Date: 2023-07-10T19:45:02Z
• Authors: Mickey Martini; Yejin Lee; Tommaso Confalone; Sanaz Shokri; Christian N. Saggau; Daniel Wolf; Genda Gu; Kenji Watanabe; Takashi Taniguchi; Domenico Montemurro; Valerii M. Vinokur; Kornelius Nielsch; Nicola Poccia
• Keywords: Cooper pair

Twisted van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures offer a unique platform for engineering the efficient Josephson coupling between cuprate thin crystals harboring the nodal superconducting order parameter. Preparing vdW heterostructures-based Josephson junction comprising stacked cuprates requires maintaining an ordered interface with preserved surface superconductivity. Here, we report the preparation of the Josephson junction out of the stacked Bi2Sr2CuCa2O8+d crystals using the cryogenic dry transfer technique and encapsulating the junction with an insulating layer, that protects the interface during the electrical contacts evaporation at the 10-6 mbar base pressure. We find that the Josephson critical current Ic has a maximum at low twist angles, comparable to that of the bulk intrinsic Josephson junctions, and is reduced by two orders of magnitude at twist angles close to 45°. The reduction of Ic occurs due to a mismatch between superconducting d-wave order parameters, which suppresses the direct Cooper pair tunneling.