No Arabic abstract
H2S is converted under ultrahigh pressure (> 110 GPa) to a metallic phase that becomes superconducting with a record Tc of 200 K. It has been proposed that the superconducting phase is body-centered cubic H3S ( Im3m , a = 3.089 {AA}) resulting from a decomposition reaction 3H2S --> 2H3S + S. The analogy of H2S and H2O leads us to a very different conclusion. The well-known dissociation of water into H3O+ and OH- increases by orders of magnitude under pressure. An equivalent behavior of H2S is anticipated under pressure with the dissociation, 2H2S --> H3S+ + SH- forming a perovskite structure (SH-)(H3S+), which consists of corner-sharing SH6 octahedra with SH- at each A-site (i.e., the center of each S8 cube). Our DFT calculations show that the perovskite (SH-)(H3S+) is thermodynamically more stable than the Im3m structure of H3S, and suggest that the A-site H atoms are most likely fluxional even at Tc.
This article reports the experimentally clarified crystal structure of a recently discovered sulfur hydride in high temperature superconducting phase which has the highest critical temperature Tc over 200 K which has been ever reported. For understanding the mechanism of the high superconductivity, the information of its crystal structure is very essential. Herein we have carried out the simultaneous measurements electrical resistance and synchrotron x-ray diffraction under high pressure, and clearly revealed that the hydrogen sulfide, H2S, decomposes to H3S and its crystal structure has body-centered cubic symmetry in the superconducting phase.
We report the temperature dependence of the upper critical fields $mu_0H_{c2}(T)$ of the high temperature superconductor H$_3$S under applied pressures of 155 and 160 GPa through the electrical resistance transition observed under DC and pulsed magnetic fields up to 65 T, a record high combination of fields and pressures. We find that $H_{c2}(T)$ generally follows the Werthamer, Helfand and Hohenberg (WHH) formalism at low fields, albeit with noticeable deviations upon approaching our experimental limit of $mu_0H = 65$ T. In fact, $H_{c2}(T)$ displays a remarkably linear dependence on temperature over an extended temperature range also found in multigap or in strongly-coupled superconductors. The best fit of $H_{c2}(T)$ to the WHH formula yields a negligible value for the Maki parameter $alpha$ and for spin-orbit scattering constant $lambda_{text{SO}}$. However, its behavior is relatively well-described by a model based on strong coupling superconductivity with a coupling constant $lambda sim 2$. Therefore, we conclude that H$_3$S behaves as a strong-coupled orbital-limited superconductor over the entire range of temperatures and fields used for our measurements.
Two single crystalline samples with the same nominal composition of Rb0.8Fe2Se2 prepared via slightly different precursor routes under the same thermal processing conditions were investigated at ambient and high pressures. One sample was found superconducting with a Tc of ~31 K without the previously reported resistivity-hump and the other was unexpectedly found to be a narrow-gap semiconductor. While the high pressure data can be understood in terms of pressure-induced variation in doping, the detailed doping effect on superconductivity is yet to be determined.
In the present study, we investigate the thermodynamic properties of the Ba$_{x}$K$_{1-x}$BiO$_{3}$ (BKBO) superconductor in the under- ($x=0.5$) and over-doped ($x=0.7$) regime, within the framework of the Migdal-Eliashberg formalism. The analysis is conducted to verify that the electron-phonon pairing mechanism is responsible for the induction of the superconducting phase in the mentioned compound. In particular, we show that BKBO is characterized by the relatively high critical value of the Coulomb pseudopotential, which changes with doping level and does not follow the Morel-Anderson model. In what follows, the corresponding superconducting band gap size and related dimensionless ratio are estimated to increase with the doping, in agreement with the experimental predictions. Moreover the effective mass of electrons is found to take on high values in the entire doping and temperature region. Finally, the characteristic dimensionless ratios for the superconducting band gap, the critical magnetic field and the specific heat for the superconducting state are predicted to exceed the limits set within the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory, suggesting pivotal role of the strong-coupling and retardation effects in the analyzed compound. Presented results supplement our previous investigations and account for the strong-coupling phonon-mediated character of the superconducting phase in BKBO at any doping level.
A recent experiment reported that robust superconductivity appears in NbTi alloys under ultrahigh pressures with an almost constant superconducting $T_c$ of ~19 K from 120 to 261.7 GPa [J. Guo et al., Adv. Mater. 31, 1807240 (2019)], which is very rare among the known superconductors. We investigate the origin of this novel superconducting behavior in NbTi alloys based on density functional theory and density functional perturbation theory calculations. Our results indicate that the pressure tends to transform NbTi alloys from a random phase to a uniformly ordered crystal phase, and the exotic robust superconductivity of NbTi alloys can still be understood in the framework of BCS theory. The Nb element in NbTi alloys plays a dominant role in the superconductivity at low pressure, while the NbTi crystal with an alternative and uniform Nb and Ti atomic arrangement may be responsible for the stable superconductivity under high pressures. The robust superconducting transition temperature of NbTi under ultrahigh pressure can be explained by a synergistic effect of the enhanced phonon frequency, the modestly reduced total electron-phonon coupling, and the pressure-dependent screened Coulomb repulsion.