Feasible Route to High-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Hydride Superconductivity.

Physical review letters
Authors
Abstract

A key challenge in materials discovery is to find high-temperature superconductors. Hydrogen and hydride materials have long been considered promising materials displaying conventional phonon-mediated superconductivity. However, the high pressures required to stabilize these materials have restricted their application. Here, we present results from high-throughput computation, considering a wide range of high-symmetry ternary hydrides from across the periodic table at ambient pressure. This large composition space is then reduced by considering thermodynamic, dynamic, and magnetic stability before direct estimations of the superconducting critical temperature. This approach has revealed a metastable ambient-pressure hydride superconductor, Mg_{2}IrH_{6}, with a predicted critical temperature of 160 K, comparable to the highest temperature superconducting cuprates. We propose a synthesis route via a structurally related insulator, Mg_{2}IrH_{7}, which is thermodynamically stable above 15 GPa, and discuss the potential challenges in doing so.

Year of Publication
2024
Journal
Physical review letters
Volume
132
Issue
16
Pages
166001
Date Published
04/2024
ISSN
1079-7114
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.166001
PubMed ID
38701475
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