No Arabic abstract
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.
The discovery of superconductivity at 200 K in the hydrogen sulfide system at large pressures [1] was a clear demonstration that hydrogen-rich materials can be high-temperature superconductors. The recent synthesis of LaH$_{10}$ with a superconducting critical temperature (T$_{text{c}}$) of 250 K [2,3] places these materials at the verge of reaching the long-dreamed room-temperature superconductivity. Electrical and x-ray diffraction measurements determined a weakly pressure-dependent T$_{text{c}}$ for LaH$_{10}$ between 137 and 218 gigapascals in a structure with a face-centered cubic (fcc) arrangement of La atoms [3]. Here we show that quantum atomic fluctuations stabilize in all this pressure range a high-symmetry Fm-3m crystal structure consistent with experiments, which has a colossal electron-phonon coupling of $lambdasim3.5$. Even if ab initio classical calculations neglecting quantum atomic vibrations predict this structure to distort below 230 GPa yielding a complex energy landscape with many local minima, the inclusion of quantum effects simplifies the energy landscape evidencing the Fm-3m as the true ground state. The agreement between the calculated and experimental T$_{text{c}}$ values further supports this phase as responsible for the 250 K superconductivity. The relevance of quantum fluctuations in the energy landscape found here questions many of the crystal structure predictions made for hydrides within a classical approach that at the moment guide the experimental quest for room-temperature superconductivity [4,5,6]. Furthermore, quantum effects reveal crucial to sustain solids with extraordinary electron-phonon coupling that may otherwise be unstable [7].
A recent report that sulfur hydride under pressure is an electron-phonon superconductor with a Tc of 190 K has been met with much excitement although it is yet to be confirmed. Based on several electron-phonon spectral density functions already available from density functional theory, we find that the electron-phonon spectrum is near optimum for Tc with a particularly large value of its characteristic phonon energy omega_ln which is due to the small hydrogen mass. We find that the thermodynamic universal BCS ratios are near those for Pb and Nb3Sn. We suggest that optical measurements could be a useful tool to establish the existence and nature of the superconductivity in this system. Conventional superconductors are in the impurity-dominated dirty limit. By contrast sulfur hydride will be in the clean limit because of its large energy gap scale. The AC optical conductivity will display distinct and separate signatures of the superconducting gap in the low-energy impurity-dominated range of the optical spectrum and additional phonon structures at higher energies where the clean limit applies.
The recent discovery of high-temperature superconductivity in single-layer iron selenide has generated significant experimental interest for optimizing the superconducting properties of iron-based superconductors through the lattice modification. For simulating the similar effect by changing the chemical composition due to S doping, we investigate the superconducting properties of high-quality single crystals of FeSe$_{1-x}$S$_{x}$ ($x$=0, 0.04, 0.09, and 0.11) using magnetization, resistivity, the London penetration depth, and low temperature specific heat measurements. We show that the introduction of S to FeSe enhances the superconducting transition temperature $T_{c}$, anisotropy, upper critical field $H_{c2}$, and critical current density $J_{c}$. The upper critical field $H_{c2}(T)$ and its anisotropy are strongly temperature dependent, indicating a multiband superconductivity in this system. Through the measurements and analysis of the London penetration depth $lambda _{ab}(T)$ and specific heat, we show clear evidence for strong coupling two-gap $s$-wave superconductivity. The temperature-dependence of $lambda _{ab}(T)$ calculated from the lower critical field and electronic specific heat can be well described by using a two-band model with $s$-wave-like gaps. We find that a $d$-wave and single-gap BCS theory under the weak-coupling approach can not describe our experiments. The change of specific heat induced by the magnetic field can be understood only in terms of multiband superconductivity.
We discuss the important aspects of synthesis and crystal growth of MgB2 under high pressure (P) and temperature (T) in Mg-B-N system, including the optimisation of P-T conditions for reproducible crystal growth, the role of liquid phases in this process, the temperature dependence of crystal size and the effect of growing instabilities on single crystals morphology. Extensive experiments have been carried out on single crystals with slightly different lattice constants and defects concentration, which revealed and possible effects of Mg-deficiency and lattice strain on the superconducting properties of MgB2 (Tc, Jc, residual resistivity ratio, anisotropy etc.).
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.