Anisotropic Gap Structure and Sign Reversal Symmetry in Monolayer Fe(Se,Te)

Nano Lett. 2023 Jan 11;23(1):140-147. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c03735. Epub 2022 Nov 30.

Abstract

The iron-based superconductors are an ideal platform to reveal the enigma of the unconventional superconductivity and potential topological superconductivity. Among them, the monolayer Fe(Se,Te)/SrTiO3(001), which is proposed to be topological nontrivial, shows interface-enhanced high-temperature superconductivity in the two-dimensional limit. However, the experimental studies on the superconducting pairing mechanism of monolayer Fe(Se,Te) films are still limited. Here, by measuring the quasiparticle interference in monolayer Fe(Se,Te)/SrTiO3(001), we report the observation of the anisotropic structure of the large superconducting gap and the sign change of the superconducting gap on different electron pockets. The results are well consistent with the "bonding-antibonding" s±-wave pairing symmetry driven by spin fluctuations in conjunction with spin-orbit coupling. Our work is of basic significance not only for a unified superconducting formalism in the iron-based superconductors, but also for understanding of topological superconductivity in high-temperature superconductors.

Keywords: anisotropic superconducting gap; high-temperature superconductors; quasiparticle interference; scanning tunneling spectroscopy; s±-wave pairing symmetry.