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Superconducting properties of transition metal dichalcogenides in proximity to a conventional superconductor

Florian Kayatz1,2,*, Annica M. Black-Schaffer1,2, and Jorge Cayao1

  • 1Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Box 524, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
  • 2Wallenberg Initiative Materials Science for Sustainability, Uppsala University, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden

  • *Contact author: florian.kayatz@physics.uu.se

Phys. Rev. B 114, 194510 – Published 14 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/2kt6-vmbf

Abstract

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) hold relevance for spin-triplet superconducting phases due to their inherent Ising spin-orbit coupling, but the majority of studies have so far focused on oversimplified models. In this work, we consider a TMD monolayer using a three-orbital model with anisotropic couplings and investigate the emergent superconducting properties when it is placed in proximity to a conventional spin-singlet s-wave superconductor. We find that the multiorbital nature of the TMDs lead to superconducting gaps not only at zero energy but also at higher energies, so-called hybridization gaps, which exhibit a complex structure due to the anisotropic couplings, challenging their spectral measurement. Moreover, we find that the inherent Ising spin-orbit coupling induces a spin splitting and a spin polarization along the z direction, which correlates with the emergence of mixed spin-triplet superconducting pairs. These spin-triplet pair correlations appear in the monolayer as a proximity-induced effect due to the impact of the Ising spin-orbit field on conventional spin-singlet s-wave superconductivity. Taking realistic parameters for a MoS2 monolayer, we show that the Ising field is strong enough to induce spin-triplet pair correlations of the same magnitude as their spin-singlet counterparts. We also include Rashba spin-orbit coupling, naturally emerging in a heterostructure and find that it induces equal spin-triplet superconducting pairs that compete with the mixed spin-triplet pairs induced by the Ising spin-orbit coupling. Our findings help understand the superconducting properties of TMDs in proximity to conventional superconductors.

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