Possibility of superconductivity in high pressure phases of BC$_3$

ORAL

Abstract

Using an ab-initio pseudopotential-local-density-approximation, we study the possibility of a high-pressure transition of graphitic planar sp$^2$ bonded BC$_3$ into an sp$^3$ bonded covalent network. Energy barriers are examined for the predicted transition to the sp$^3$ phase and for the observed onset of phase separation in BC$_3$ under high pressure, high temperature conditions [V. L. Solozhenko \textit{et al.}, Appl. Phys. Lett. \textbf{85}, 1508 (2004)]. The sp$^3$ phase of BC$_3 $ is predicted to be metallic and superconducting and is similar to 25\% boron-doped diamond without boron clusters. Calculations of phonon frequencies and electron-phonon coupling allow for an estimate of the superconducting transition temperature.

*This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grant No. DMR04-39768, the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. Computational resources have been provided by NERSC.

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Authors

  • Jonathan E. Moussa

    • UC Berkeley \& LBNL

  • Marvin Cohen

    • Dept of Physics UC Berkeley, Mat Sci Div LBNL
    • Department of Physics, University of California at Berkeley and Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720
    • UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    • University of California at Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    • UC Berkeley \& LBNL
    • UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory