The aim of this project is to predict high-Tc conventional superconductors at ambient pressure, employing state-of-the-art ab-initio methods for evolutionary crystal structure prediction and superconductivity. In particular, the project focuses on superhydrides, which recently established the absolute record for the critical temperature (288 K), and presents two different strategies to reduce their stabilization pressures from the Megabar range to room pressure. This project is a natural continuation of the research activity carried out in my PhD, in which I investigated several aspects of high-Tc superconductivity in superhydrides at high pressures.
This research brings a large innovation potential both at an applied and at a fundamental level. In fact, the high pressure required to stabilize high-temperature hydride superconductors is the main obstacle for their practical use. This work goes in the direction of removing, or at least reducing, this requirement. If successful, our results will have a profound impact for at least three reasons. First, it will represent an important step towards the realization of superconductivity at room pressure, which would have tremendous technological applications, such as lossless power grids, magnetic levitation trains, or efficient energy storage. Second, our strategy for lowering the stabilization pressure could find application for other high-pressure materials, opening new horizons for the investigation of materials at high pressure. Third, finding candidate materials which can be synthesized at low pressure will make experiments on hydrides accessible to many experimental groups, as opposed to the current state of research, where only a handful of groups worldwide have the technology to perform them. It is worth mentioning that our preliminary work in this direction, which was presented at the March Meeting of the American Physical Society [1], has already drawn a lot of interest from scientific and popular press [2, 3]. References [1] L. Boeri, Ab-initio design of new high-Tc room-pressure conventional superconductors [conference presentation], APS March Meeting 2021, Virtual Meeting [2] M. Rini, Easing the squeeze on superconductors, Physics 14, 46 (2021) [3] E. Conover, Can room-temperature superconductors work without extreme pressure?, Science News (2021)