Electric Field Induced Permanent Superconductivity in Layered Metal Nitride Chlorides HfNCl and ZrNCl**Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No 11704403, the National Key Research Program of China under Grant No 2016YFA0401000 and 2016YFA0300604, and the Strategic Priority Research Program (B) of Chinese Academy of Sciences under Grant No XDB07020100.

Abstract

Devices of electric double-layer transistors (EDLTs) with ionic liquid have been employed as an effective way to dope carriers over a wide range. However, the induced electronic states can hardly survive in the materials after releasing the gate voltage VG at temperatures higher than the melting point of the selected ionic liquid. Here we show that a permanent superconductivity with transition temperature Tc of 24 and 15 K is realized in single crystals and polycrystalline samples of HfNCl and ZrNCl upon applying proper VG’s at different temperatures. Reversible change between insulating and superconducting states can be obtained by applying positive and negative VG at low temperature such as 220 K, whereas VG’s applied at 250 K induce the irreversible superconducting transition. The upper critical field Hc2 of the superconducting states obtained at different gating temperatures shows similar temperature dependence. We propose a reasonable scenario that partial vacancy of Cl ions could be caused by applying proper VG’s at slightly higher processing temperatures, which consequently results in a permanent electron doping in the system. Such a technique shows great potential to systematically tune the bulk electronic state in the similar two-dimensional systems.