On the high-pressure superconducting phase in platinum hydride

Abstract

Motivated by the ambiguous experimental data for the superconducting phase in silane (SiH${}_4$), which may originate from the platinum hydride (PtH), we provide a theoretical study of the superconducting state in the latter alloy. The quantitative estimates of the thermodynamics of PtH at 100 GPa are given for a wide range of the Coulomb pseudopotential values (${\mu }^{\ast }$) within the Eliashberg formalism. The obtained critical temperature value ($T_C\in ⟨12.94,20.01⟩$ for ${\mu }^{\ast }\in ⟨0.05,0.15⟩$) agrees well with the experimental $T_C$ for SiH${}_4$ which may be ascribed to PtH. Moreover, the calculated characteristic thermodynamic ratios exceed the predictions of the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory, implying occurrence of the strong-coupling and retardation effects in PtH. We note that our results can be of high relevance for the future studies on hydrides.