Abstract
AT ambient pressure and low temperatures, hydrogen crystallizes in an insulating molecular phase. The possibility of a transition to a metallic structure at high pressures has been the subject of research for over fifty years1-6. Moreover, it has been recognized for some time that metallic hydrogen could be a superconductor2, but estimates of its transition temperature vary widely4,7,8. Here we present the first ab initio calculation of the electron-phonon coupling constant λ in a distorted hexagonal high-pressure (∼400 GPa) phase of hydrogen; this first-principles approach has successfully predicted superconductivity in compressed silicon9,10. From the calculated value of λ for this structure, and using standard BCS-Eliashberg11-13 theory, the superconducting transition temperature Tc is estimated to be 230±85 K. Thus if metallic hydrogen were to be formed in the laboratory in the structure proposed here or in similar structures, it should be superconducting with the highest Tc yet known.
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Barbee, T., García, A. & Cohen, M. First-principles prediction of high-temperature superconductivity in metallic hydrogen. Nature 340, 369–371 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1038/340369a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/340369a0
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