High Mobility Free-Standing InSb Nanoflags for Quantum Technologies

High-quality III–V narrow bandgap semiconductor materials with strong spin–orbit coupling and large Landé g-factor provide a promising platform for next-generation applications in the field of high-speed electronics, spintronics, and quantum computing. Indium antimonide (InSb) offers a narrow bandgap, high carrier mobility, and small effective mass and, thus, is very appealing in this context. In fact, this material has attracted tremendous attention in recent years for the implementation of topological superconducting states supporting Majorana zero modes. However, high-quality heteroepitaxial two-dimensional (2D) InSb layers are very difficult to realize owing to the large lattice mismatch with all commonly available semiconductor substrates. An alternative pathway is the growth of free-standing single-crystalline 2D InSb nanostructures, the so-called nanoflags. Here, we demonstrate fabrication of ballistic Josephson-junction devices based on InSb nanoflags with Ti/Nb contacts that show a gate-tunable proximity-induced supercurrent up to 50 nA at 250 mK and a sizable excess current. The devices show clear signatures of subharmonic gap structures, indicating phase-coherent transport in the junction and a high transparency of the interfaces. This places InSb nanoflags in the spotlight as a versatile and convenient 2D platform for advanced quantum technologies.

This research activity was partially supported by the SUPERTOP project, QUANTERA ERA-NET Cofound in Quantum Technologies (H2020 Grant No. 731473) and by the FET-OPEN project AndQC (H2020 Grant No. 828948).

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