High-Temperature Conventional Superconductivity in the Boron-Carbon system: Material Trends

Abstract

In this work we probe the possibility of high-temperature conventional superconductivity in the boron-carbon system, using ab-initio screening. A database of 320 metastable structures with fixed composition (50$\%$/50$\%$) is generated with the Minima-Hopping method, and characterized with electronic and vibrational descriptors. Full electron-phonon calculations on sixteen representative structures allow to identify general trends in $T_{\text{c}}$ across and within the four families in the energy landscape, and to construct an approximate $T_{\text{c}}$ predictor, based on transparently interpretable and easily computable electronic and vibrational descriptors. Based on these, we estimate that around 10$\%$ of all metallic structures should exhibit $T_{\text{c}}$'s above 30 $K$. This work is a first step towards ab-initio design of new high-$T_{\text{c}}$ superconductors.

16 pages, 21 figures, 1 table