Phonon-mediated superconductivity in the transition metal trioxides XO3 (X=Ru,Re,Os,Ir,Pt) under pressure

Abstract

A recent experiment by P. F. Shan et al. (arXiv:2304.09011) found that rhenium trioxide ReO3, a simple metal at ambient pressure, becomes superconducting with a transition temperature as high as 17 K at 30 GPa. In this paper, we analyze the electron-phonon origin of superconductivity in rhombohedral ReO3 in detail. In addition, we also conduct a high-throughput screening of isostructural transition metal trioxides XO3 in searching for potential pressure-induced superconductors. In total, 28 XO3 compounds have been studied, of which four candidates RuO3, OsO3, IrO3, and PtO3 are predicted superconducting with the transition temperatures of 26.4, 30.3, 0.9, and 2.8 K at 30 GPa, respectively. Both IrO3 and PtO3 stay superconducting even at ambient pressure. In ReO3, RuO3,OsO3, and IrO3, the conduction electrons around the Fermi level are dominantly from the X-d and the O-2p orbitals, and their electron-phonon coupling originates from the lattice dynamics of both the heavier transition metal atom and the oxygen atom. Inclusion of spin-orbital coupling would mildly suppress the transition temperatures of these transition metal trioxide superconductors except RuO3.

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