The superconducting diode effect (SDE) with nonreciprocal supercurrent
transport has attracted considerable attention in recent years, both for its
intriguing physics and for its potential applications in superconducting
circuits. This study shows that planar Josephson junctions (JJs) based on
type-II Weyl semimetal (WSM) MoTe2 can exhibit a prominent SDE due to the
emergence of asymmetric Josephson effect (AJE) in perpendicular magnetic
fields. As a result of the AJE, the critical supercurrents Ic are very
asymmetrical regarding the current direction [/Delta]Ic. [/Delta]Ic can also be
modulated effectively by an external magnetic field. As a result of the
inversion symmetry breaking in WSM, all these results are in agreement with
theoretically predicted intrinsic AJEs. The field-tunable AJE allows us to
demonstrate the rectification of supercurrent in such MoTe2 JJs, with
rectification efficiency up to 17%, paving the way for their application in
superconducting electronics