Superconductivity below 20 K in heavily electron-doped surface layer of FeSe bulk crystal

A superconducting transition temperature (Tc) as high as 100 K was recently discovered in one monolayer FeSe grown on SrTiO3. The discovery ignited efforts to identify the mechanism for the markedly enhanced Tc from its bulk value of 8 K. There are two main views about the origin of the Tc enhancement: interfacial effects and/or excess electrons with strong electron correlation. Here, we report the observation of superconductivity below 20 K in surface electron-doped bulk FeSe. The doped surface layer possesses all the key spectroscopic aspects of the monolayer FeSe on SrTiO3. Without interfacial effects, the surface layer state has a moderate Tc of 20 K with a smaller gap opening of 4.2 meV. Our results show that excess electrons with strong correlation cannot induce the maximum Tc, which in turn reveals the need for interfacial effects to achieve the highest Tc in one monolayer FeSe on SrTiO3. Thin FeSe film on SrTiO3 substrate becomes a superconductor with a transition temperature over 100 K, yet the origin remains controversial. Here, Seo et al. show superconductivity below 20 K on the electron-doped surface of an FeSe crystal, suggesting a decisive role of interfacial effects in the enhancement of superconductivity.