Thickness dependence of superconductivity in single-crystal Ta4Pd3Te16 nanoribbons

We present the thickness-dependent electrical properties of mechanically exfoliated single crystal Ta4Pd3Te16 nanoribbons. By decreasing the nanoribbon thickness in the range of 500–20 nm, we observed a suppression of superconductivity driven by both the thickness and the external magnetic field. In particular, for the thinner nanoribbons with the thickness less than 40 nm, there is a non-zero resistance state extending down to low temperature, followed by the loss of superconductivity when the thickness is decreased to the order of the coherence length. We found that the theory of a thermally activated phase slip can well describe the temperature dependence of the resistance below Tc. The disorder-induced enhanced Coulomb interaction with the decrease in the thickness is expected to be dominant in the gradual crossover behavior from superconducting to normal or very weakly insulating behavior in the low-dimensional system.