Superconductivity in the van der Waals crystal SnS2 up to 105 GPa

Abstract

The manipulation of electronic properties in layered materials is of great importance for both device design and fundamental research. Here, we report the pressure engineering on SnS2, a typical van der Waals crystal with promising application in the field of photonic and electronic devices, which is a semiconductor with a large band gap at ambient condition. The band gap was tuned by pressure from ∼2.2eV at ambient condition to ∼0.6eV at 30.7 GPa, and then SnS2 became a metal near 35 GPa. Upon further compression, superconducting (SC) transition was observed above ∼50GPa, and the SC critical temperature Tc increased with pressure, reaching ∼6.0K at ∼105GPa. Since there is much similarity with MoS2 and/or other metal dichalcogenides, SnS2 provides an extra platform to investigate the pressure-driven superconductivity in the large metal dichalcogenide family, which benefits the exploration of new superconductors and underlying mechanisms as well.

Source-reported materials — not catalogue approval

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