Emergent Superconductivity and Nonreciprocal Transport in a van der Waals Dirac Semimetal/Antiferromagnet Heterostructure.

We investigate emergent superconductivity and nonreciprocal transport (magnetochiral anisotropy and superconducting diode effect) at the heterointerface of two nonsuperconducting van der Waals (vdW) materials, Dirac semimetal ZrTe2 and antiferromagnetic iron chalcogenide FeTe, grown using molecular beam epitaxy. We show from electrical transport measurements that two-dimensional (2D) superconductivity arises at the heterointerface below a critical temperature (Tc) of ∼10 K. In the superconducting transition region, nonreciprocal transport, characterized by magneto-chiral anisotropy, exhibits a magnitude comparable to that observed in topological insulators and is enhanced by a factor of 3 when the heterostructure is capped with a 2D vdW ferromagnet (CrTe2). Below Tc, the superconducting diode effect exhibits an efficiency of 29%. With strong spin-orbit coupling in ZrTe2, these epitaxial heterostructures provide an attractive epitaxial vdW platform for exploring unconventional superconductivity in Dirac semimetals and for developing nonreciprocal devices for superconducting electronics.