Engineering hybrid epitaxial InAsSb/Al nanowires for stronger topological protection

The combination of strong spin-orbit coupling, large g factors, and the coupling to a superconductor can be used to create a topologically protected state in a semiconductor nanowire. Here we report on growth and characterization of hybrid epitaxial InAsSb/Al nanowires, with varying composition and crystal structure.

We find the strongest spin-orbit interaction at intermediate compositions in zinc-blende InAs1-xSbx nanowires, exceeding that of both InAs and InSb materials, confirming recent theoretical studies. We show that the epitaxial InAsSb/Al interface allows for a hard induced superconducting gap and 2e transport in Coulomb charging experiments, similarly to experiments on InAs/Al and InSb/Al materials, and find measurements consistent with topological phase transitions at low magnetic fields due to large effective g factors.

Finally we present a method to grow pure wurtzite InAsSb nanowires which are predicted to exhibit even stronger spin-orbit coupling than the zinc-blende structure.