Superconductivity in rhombohedral trilayer graphene

To access superconductivity via the electric field effect in a clean, two-dimensional device is a central goal of nanoelectronics. Recently, superconductivity has been realized in graphene moiré heterostructures 1 – 4 ; however, many of these structures are not mechanically stable, and experiments show signatures of strong disorder. Here we report the observation of superconductivity—manifesting as low or vanishing resistivity at sub-kelvin temperatures—in crystalline rhombohedral trilayer graphene 5 , 6 , a structurally metastable carbon allotrope. Superconductivity occurs in two distinct gate-tuned regions (SC1 and SC2), and is deep in the clean limit defined by the ratio of mean free path and superconducting coherence length. Mapping of the normal state Fermi surfaces by quantum oscillations reveals that both superconductors emerge from an annular Fermi sea, and are proximal to an isospin-symmetry-breaking transition where the Fermi surface degeneracy changes 7 . SC1 emerges from a paramagnetic normal state, whereas SC2 emerges from a spin-polarized, valley-unpolarized half-metal 1 7 and violates the Pauli limit for in-plane magnetic fields by at least one order of magnitude 8 , 9 . We discuss our results in view of several mechanisms, including conventional phonon-mediated pairing 10 , 11 , pairing due to fluctuations of the proximal isospin order 12 , and intrinsic instabilities of the annular Fermi liquid 13 , 14 . Our observation of superconductivity in a clean and structurally simple two-dimensional metal provides a model system to test competing theoretical models of superconductivity without the complication of modelling disorder, while enabling new classes of field-effect controlled electronic devices based on correlated electron phenomena and ballistic electron transport.