Atomic and electronic structures of Cu2H and CuH have been investigated by high pressure NMR spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and ab-initio calculations. Metallic Cu2H was synthesized at a pressure of 40 GPa, and semi-metallic CuH at 90 GPa, found stable up to 160 GPa. Experiments and computations suggest the formation of a metallic 1H-sublattice as well as a high 1H mobility of ~10-7 cm2/s in Cu2H. Comparison of Cu2H and FeH data suggests that deviations from Fermi gas behavior, formation of conductive hydrogen networks, and high 1H mobility could be common features of metal hydrides.
A number of transition metal hydrides with close-packed metal sublattices of fcc or hcp structures with hydrogen in octahedral interstitial positions were obtained by the high-pressure hydrogen technique described by Ponyatovskii et al, Sov. Phys. Usp. 25 (1982) 596. In this paper we consider volume increase of metals by hydrogenation and possible crystal structure of gold hydride in relation with the structure of mercury, the nearest neighbor of Au in the Periodic table. Suggested structure of AuH has a basic tetragonal body-centered cell that is very similar to the mercury structure Hg-tI2. …
We exhaustively search quaternary metal hydrides based on the (13-2-1) and (13-3-1) structures that are the two of the putative densest ternary sphere packings in cubic systems [R. Koshoji \textit{et al.}, Phys. Rev. E \textbf{104}, 024101 (2021)]. The 73304 candidate hydrides are generated by substituting the small spheres with hydrogen atoms, the medium, large, and fourth spheres with metallic atoms. Especially, the substitution of the small spheres with hydrogen atoms gives the unconventional hydrogen sublattices. We screen unstable hydrides in the candidates through geometrical optimizatio…
High pressure and high temperature properties of AB (A = $^6$Li, $^7$Li; B = H, D, T) are investigated with first-principles method comprehensively. It is found that the H$^{-}$ sublattice features in the low-pressure electronic structure near the Fermi level of LiH are shifted to that dominated by the Li$^{+}$ sublattice in compression. The lattice dynamics is studied in quasi-harmonic approximation, from which the phonon contribution to the free energy and the isotopic effects are accurately modelled with the aid of a parameterized double-Debye model. The obtained equation of state (EOS) mat…
Knowledge of the behavior of hydrogen in metal hydrides is the key for understanding their electronic properties. So far, no experimental methods exist to access these properties beyond 100 GPa, where high-Tc superconductivity emerges. Here, we present an 1H-NMR study of cubic FeH up to 200GPa. We observe a distinct deviation from the ideal metallic behavior between 64 and 110 GPa that suggests pressure-induced H-H interactions. Accompanying ab-initio calculations support this interpretation, as they reveal the formation of an intercalating sublattice of electron density, which enhances the hy…
Hydrogen-rich hydrides attract great attention due to recent theoretical (1) and then experimental discovery of record high-temperature superconductivity in H3S (Tc = 203 K at 155 GPa (2)). Here we search for stable uranium hydrides at pressures up to 500 GPa using ab initio evolutionary crystal structure prediction. Chemistry of the U-H system turned out to be extremely rich, with 14 new compounds, including hydrogen-rich UH5, UH6, U2H13, UH7, UH8, U2H17, and UH9. Their crystal structures are based on either common f.c.c. or h.c.p. uranium sublattice and unusual H8 cubic clusters. Our high-pr…
Evolutionary structure searches are used to predict stable phases with unique stoichiometries in the hydrogen-rich region of the magnesium/hydrogen phase diagram under pressure. MgH$_4$, MgH$_{12}$ and MgH$_{16}$ are found to be thermodynamically stable with respect to decomposition into MgH$_2$ and H$_2$ near 100 GPa, and all lie on the convex hull by 200 GPa. MgH$_4$ contains two H$^-$ anions and one H$_2$ molecule per Mg$^{2+}$ cation, whereas the hydrogenic sublattices of MgH$_{12}$ and MgH$_{16}$ are composed solely of H$_2^{δ-}$ molecules. The high-hydrogen content stoichiometries have a…
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.…
Recently, several research groups announced reaching the point of metallization of hydrogen above 400 GPa. Following the mainstream of extensive investigations of compressed polyhydrides, in this work we demonstrate that small (4 atom %) doping of molecular hydrogen by strontium leads to a dramatic reduction in the metallization pressure to about 200 GPa. Studying the high-pressure chemistry of the Sr-H system at 56-180 GPa, we observed the formation of several previously unknown compounds: C2/m-Sr$_3$H$_{13}$, pseudocubic SrH$_6$, SrH$_9$ with cubic F-43m Sr sublattice, and pseudotetragonal P…
Li$_{4}$BN$_{3}$H$_{10}$ is of great interest for hydrogen storage and for lithium-ion battery solid electrolytes because of its high hydrogen content and high lithium-ion conductivity, respectively. The practical hydrogen storage application of this complex hydride is, however, limited due to irreversibility and cogeneration of ammonia (NH$_{3}$) during the decomposition. We report a first-principles density-functional theory study of native point defects and defect complexes in Li$_{4}$BN$_{3}$H$_{10}$, and propose an atomistic mechanism for the material's decomposition that involves mass tr…
HCl, a 'textbook' example of a polar covalent molecule, is a well-known compound of hydrogen and chlorine. Inspired by the discovery of unexpected stable stoichiometries of sodium chlorides, we performed systematic searches for all stable compounds in the H-Cl system from ambient pressure to higher pressures up to 500 GPa using variable-composition ab initio evolutionary algorithm USPEX. We found several compounds that are stable under pressure, i.e. HCl, H$_2$Cl, H$_3$Cl, H$_5$Cl and H$_4$Cl$_7$, which display a rich variety of chemical bonding types. At ambient pressure, H$_2$, Cl$_2$ and HC…
A-15 type superconducting hydride $La_4H_{23}$: Nanograined structure with low strain, strong electron-phonon interaction, and moderate level of nonadiabaticity
Following the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity in the La-H system, where for the recently discovered fcc-LaH10 a record critical temperature Tc = 250 K was achieved [Drozdov et al., Nature, 569, 528 (2019) and Somayazulu et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 027001 (2019)], we studied the formation of new chemical compounds in the barium-hydrogen system at pressures up to 173 GPa. Using in situ generation of hydrogen from NH3BH3, we synthesized previously unknown superhydride BaH12 with a pseudocubic (fcc) Ba sublattice, which was observed in a wide range of pressures from 75 to 173 GPa…
