Emergent superconductivity and non-reciprocal transport in a van der Waals Dirac semimetal/antiferromagnet heterostructure

We investigate emergent superconductivity and non-reciprocal transport (magnetochiral anisotropy, superconducting diode effect) at the heterointerface of two non-superconducting van der Waals (vdW) materials, the Dirac semimetal ZrTe$_2$ and the 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 temperature $T \sim 12$~K. When capped with a 2D ferromagnet (CrTe$_2$), these heterostructures show a superconducting diode effect with efficiency of about 30\%. With strong spin-orbit coupling in ZrTe$_2$, these epitaxial heterostructures provide an attractive epitaxial vdW platform for exploring unconventional superconductivity in Dirac semimetals and for developing non-reciprocal devices for superconducting electronics.