Professor Ashkan Salamat of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas will present “Towards Ambient Superconductivity: Novel Hydrogen-Rich Materials".  

Abstract: 

One of the long-standing challenges in experimental physics is the observation of room-temperature superconductivity (RTSC). Recently, high-temperature conventional superconductivity in hydrogen-rich materials has been reported in several systems under high pressure. An important discovery leading to RTSC is the pressure-driven disproportionation of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) to H3S, with a confirmed transition temperature of 203 kelvin at a very extreme pressure of 155 gigapascals. I will show that CH4 readily mix with H2S and hydrogen to form guest–host structures at lower pressures, and are of comparable size at 4 gigapascals. By introducing methane at low pressures into the H2S + H2 precursor mixture for H3S, molecular exchange is allowed within a large assemblage of van der Waals solids that are hydrogen-rich with H2 inclusions; these guest–host structures become the building blocks of a room temperature superconducting compound at extreme pressures. Furthermore, I will present our work on metal superhydrides, using a direct combination of the elements to synthesize yttrium superhydride, which demonstrates conventional superconductivity at 262 K and is in excellent agreement with density functional structure search and BCS theory calculations.

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