Description
Ever since the discovery of superconductivity in mercury by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes in 1911, tremendous effort has been directed towards expanding the varieties of high $T_C$ superconducting materials. In recent decades, interest in 2D superconducting materials has been gaining momentum due to its numerous potential applications for nanoscale devices such as superconducting transistors, quantum interferometers, and superconducting qubits. In particular, a family of materials known as layered hexagonal metal borides ($MB_2$) has garnered intrigue as a probe for investigating the behaviour of superconductivity at the 3D to 2D transition. This is due to the fact that many of these $MB_2$ compounds are chemically exfoliable from single-crystalline layered ternary borides, of which many have been shown experimentally to be superconducting in bulk form [1]. Amongst them, $MgB_2$ is of particular intrigue due to its relatively high $T_C$ of ~39 $K$, as well as exhibiting two-gap superconductivity in bulk [1]. Furthermore, hydrogenation of 2D $LiBC$ has recently been reported to exhibit three-gap superconductivity with $T_C$ of 80 $K$ [2], thus piquing interest in 2D metal borocarbide materials.
Using density functional theory with the Eliashberg formulism we investigate phonon-mediated superconductivity in 2D $M_{2}BC$ (M = Na, K, Nb) structures with varying surface hydrogenation to provide insight into how different metals and surface hydrogenation impact the transition temperature of these materials as well as their mechanical properties.
References
[1] Bekaert, J., Bignardi, L., Aperis, A., Van Abswoude, P., Mattevi, C., Gorovikov, S., Petaccia, L., Goldoni, A., Partoens, B., Oppeneer, P.M. and Peeters, F.M., 2017. Free surfaces recast superconductivity in few-monolayer MgB2: Combined first-principles and ARPES demonstration. Scientific Reports, 7(1), p.14458.
[2] Liu, H.D., Wang, B.T., Fu, Z.G., Lu, H.Y. and Zhang, P., 2024. Three-gap superconductivity with T c above 80 K in hydrogenated 2D monolayer LiBC. Physical Review Research, 6(3), p.033241.
| I am the presenting author | Yes |
|---|