Superconductivity above 30K Achieved in Dense Scandium

作者：Xin 鑫 He 何, Changling 昌玲 Zhang 张, Zhiwen 芷文 Li 李, Sijia 思佳 Zhang 张, Shaomin Feng, Jianfa 建发 Zhao 赵, Ke 可 Lu 卢, Baosen Min, Yi 毅 Peng 彭, Xiancheng 贤成 Wang 望, Jin 静 Song 宋, Luhong Wang, Saori Imada Kawaguchi, Cheng 诚 Ji 吉, Bing 冰 Li 李, Haozhe Liu, John S. Tse, Changqing 常青 Jin 靳 · 发表于：Chinese Physics Letters · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1088/0256-307x/40/10/107403 · 被引用次数：18 · 研究领域：Iron-based superconductors research、Superconductivity in MgB2 and Alloys、Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism

Superconductivity is one of most intriguing quantum phenomena, and the quest for elemental superconductors with high critical temperature ( T c ) is of great scientific significance due to their relatively simple material composition and the underlying mechanism. Here we report the experimental discovery of densely compressed scandium (Sc) becoming the first elemental superconductor with T c breaking into 30 K range, which is comparable to the T c values of the classic La–Ba–Cu–O or LaFeAsO superconductors. Our results show that T c onset of Sc increases from ∼ 3 K at around 43 GPa to ∼ 32 K at about 283 GPa ( T c zero ∼ 31 K), which is well above liquid neon temperature. Interestingly, measured T c shows no sign of saturation up to the maximum pressure achieved in our experiments, indicating that T c may be even higher upon further compression.