Proximity effect in PbTe-Pb hybrid nanowire Josephson junctions

Semiconductor-superconductor hybrid nanowires are a leading material platform for the realization of Majorana zero modes. The semiconductors in previous studies are dominantly InAs or InSb. In this paper, we show the induced superconductivity in PbTe nanowires epitaxially coupled to a superconductor Pb. The Josephson junction devices based on this hybrid reveal a gate-tunable supercurrent in the open regime and a hard superconducting gap in the tunneling regime. By demonstrating the superconducting proximity effect, our result can enable Majorana searches and other applications, such as gate-tunable qubits in a new material platform.