Superconductivity above 30K Achieved in Dense Scandium
Xin 鑫 He 何, Changling 昌玲 Zhang 张, Zhiwen 芷文 Li 李, Sijia 思佳 Zhang 张, Shaomin Feng, Jianfa 建发 Zhao 赵, Ke 可 Lu 卢, Baosen Min, Yi 毅 Peng 彭, Tao Wang, Jin 静 Song 宋, Luhong Wang, Saori I. Kawaguchi, Cheng 诚 Ji 吉, Bing 冰 Li 李, Haozhe Liu, John S. Tse, Changqing 常青 Jin 靳
Abstract
Superconductivity is one of most intriguing quantum phenomena, and the quest for elemental superconductors with high critical temperature ( T c ) is of great scientific significance due to their relatively simple material composition and the underlying mechanism. Here we report the experimental discovery of densely compressed scandium (Sc) becoming the first elemental superconductor with T c breaking into 30 K range, which is comparable to the T c values of the classic La–Ba–Cu–O or LaFeAsO superconductors. Our results show that <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mrow> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mi>T</mml:mi> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">c</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">onset</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> of Sc increases from ∼ 3 K at around 43 GPa to ∼ 32 K at about 283 GPa ( <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mrow> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mi>T</mml:mi> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">c</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">zero</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> <mml:mo>∼</mml:mo> <mml:mn>31</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> K), which is well above liquid neon temperature. Interestingly, measured T c shows no sign of saturation up to the maximum pressure achieved in our experiments, indicating that T c may be even higher upon further compression.