Pressure-induced Superconductivity in CaC2

TL;DR

This study predicts pressure-induced transformations in CaC2 leading to superconductivity, with high electron-phonon coupling and critical temperatures up to nearly 10 K, revealing new potential for alkali-earth metal carbides under extreme conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel theoretical prediction of superconductivity in CaC2 under high pressure, detailing structural transformations and electron-phonon interactions.

Findings

CaC2 undergoes structural transitions under pressure.

Immm phase exhibits the highest electron-phonon coupling.

Superconducting critical temperature reaches up to 9.8 K.

Abstract

Carbon can exist as isolated dumbbell, one-dimensional (1D) chain, 2D plane, and 3D network in carbon solids or carbon-based compounds, which attributes to its rich chemical binding way, including sp-, sp2-, and sp3-hybridized bonds. Sp2 hybridizing carbon always captures special attention due to its unique physical and chemical property. Here, using evolutionary algorithm in conjunction with ab initio method, we found that under compression, dumbbell carbon in CaC2 can be polymerized firstly into one-dimensional chain and then into ribbon and further into two dimensional graphite sheet at higher pressure. The C2m structure transforms into an orthorhombic Cmcm phase at 0.5 GPa, followed by another orthorhombic Immm phase, which is stabilized at wide pressure range of 15.2-105.8 GPa and then forced into MgB2-type phase with wide range stability up to at least 1 TPa. Strong electron-phonon coupling in cold compressed CaC2 is found, in particular for Immm phase, which has the highest lambda value (0.562-0.564) among them, leading to its high superconducting critical temperature (7.9~9.8 K), wihich is comparable to 11.5K value of CaC6. Our research results show that calcium can not only stabilize carbon sp2 hybridization at larger range of pressure but make them present superconducting behavior, which would further ignite experimental and theoretical research interests on Alkali-Earth metal carbides to uncover their peculiar physical properties under extreme conditions.