Conventional superconductivity at 190 K at high pressures

By A. Drozdov, M. Eremets, I. Troyan. 2014

585 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The highest critical temperature of superconductivity Tc has been achieved in cuprates: 133 K at ambient pressure and 164 K at high pressures. As the nature of superconductivity in these materials is still not disclosed, the prospects for a higher Tc are not clear. In contrast the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory gives a clear guide for achieving high Tc: it should be a favorable combination of high frequency phonons, strong coupling between electrons and phonons, and high density of states. These conditions can be fulfilled for metallic hydrogen and covalent hydrogen dominant compounds. Numerous followed calculations supported this idea and predicted Tc=100-235 K for many hydrides but only moderate Tc~17 K has been observed experimentally. Here we found that sulfur hydride transforms at P~90 GPa to metal and superconductor with Tc increasing with pressure to 150 K at ~200 GPa. This is in general agreement with recent calculations of Tc~80 K for H2S. Moreover we found superconductivity with Tc~190 K in a H2S sample pressurized to P>150 GPa at T>220 K. This superconductivity likely associates with the dissociation of H2S, and formation of SHn (n>2) hydrides. We proved occurrence of superconductivity by the drop of the resistivity at least 50 times lower than the copper resistivity, the decrease of Tc with magnetic field, and the strong isotope shift of Tc in D2S which evidences a major role of phonons in the superconductivity. H2S is a substance with a moderate content of hydrogen therefore high Tc can be expected in a wide range of hydrogen-contain materials. Hydrogen atoms seem to be essential to provide the high frequency modes in the phonon spectrum and the strong electron-phonon coupling.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Geophysics, Inorganic Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/283de85795c1da6c567a3b15ce56751762a668b5

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Citations in the corpus

Evidence for Superconductivity above 260 K in Lanthanum Superhydride at Megabar Pressures. (2018, background): “ (H 2 S) 2 H 2 with high-T c superconductivity, Sci. Rep. 4, 6968 (2014). [7] A. P. Drozdov, M. I. Eremets and I. A. Troyan, Conventional superconductivity at 190 K at high pressures, arXiv:1412.0460 [8] A. P. Drozdov, M. I. Eremets, I. A. Troyan, V. Ksenofontov and S. I. Shylin, Conventional superc”
On Distribution of Superconductivity in Metal Hydrides (2018, background): “Recent progress in experimental synthesis and measurement of superconducting properties of H3S [1], H3Se [2,3], Si2H6 [4], LaH10 [5–7], FeH5 [8,9], UH7 [10], CeH9 [11,12], ThH9 and ThH10 [13], PrH9 [14], and NdH9 [15] together with theoretical predictions including the above compounds and LiH8 [16],”
A perspective on conventional high-temperature superconductors at high pressure: Methods and materials (2019, methodology): “For further details see A. Drozdov thesis work [166] and Ref.”