English

Metastability and high-Tc superconductivity in A15-type ternary hydride YSbH6 at moderate pressure

Superconductivity 2025-12-24 v1 Materials Science

Abstract

The discovery of high-temperature superconductors remains a central challenge in materials science. Hydrogen-rich compounds are among the most promising candidates, as they can exhibit phonon-mediated superconductivity at elevated critical temperatures, though their stabilization typically requires extreme pressures. % Here, we report the identification of YSbH6_{6} as a promising superconductor by a multi-stage high-throughput screening on ternary A15-type hydrides, followed by a high-throughput computational search of the Y--Sb--H system, accelerated by ephemeral data derived potentials. % The cubic Pm\Bar3Pm\Bar{3} YSbH6_{6} phase exhibits a predicted critical temperature of 118\,K at 50\,GPa, among the highest TcT_{\rm c} reported to date for an A15-hydride at this pressure. Thermodynamic analysis shows that YSbH6_{6} lies \sim100\,meV/atom above the convex hull at 50\,GPa, but only 26\,meV/atom above the hull at 120\,GPa, suggesting possible metastability and synthesis at similar high pressure conditions. The phase is dynamically stable over a wide pressure range (20--120\,GPa), displays kinetic stability at 50\,GPa and elastic stability at 20 and 50\,GPa, key ingredients for long-lived metastable behaviour at moderate pressures. % These results highlight YSbH6_{6} as a benchmark case illustrating the balance between high-TcT_{\rm c} performance and limited thermodynamic stability in ternary hydrides, and underscore the importance of combined dynamic, thermodynamic, kinetic and elastic stability analyses for guiding experimental synthesis of metastable superconductors.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.19901,
  title  = {Metastability and high-Tc superconductivity in A15-type ternary hydride YSbH6 at moderate pressure},
  author = {Maélie Caussé and Kieran Bozier and Peter I. C. Cooke and Stefano Racioppi and Chris J. Pickard},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.19901},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

10 pages, 4 figures