Engineering topics
Quan, Yundi
Publications and source records attributed to Quan, Yundi.
The 2021 room-temperature superconductivity roadmap
Designing materials with advanced functionalities is the main focus of contemporary solid-state physics and chemistry. Research efforts worldwide are funneled into a few high-end goals, one of the oldest, and most fascinating of which is the search for an ambient temperature superconductor (A-SC). The reason is clear: superconductivity at ambient conditions implies being able to handle, measure and access a single, coherent, macroscopic quantum mechanical state without the limitations associated with cryogenics and pressurization. This would not only open exciting avenues for fundamental research, but also pave the road for a wide range of technological applications, affecting strategic areas such as energy conservation and climate change. In this roadmap we have collected contributions from many of the main actors working on superconductivity, and asked them to share their personal viewpoint on the field. The hope is that this article will serve not only as an instantaneous picture of the status of research, but also as a true roadmap defining the main long-term theoretical and experimental challenges that lie ahead. Interestingly, although the current research in superconductor design is dominated by conventional (phonon-mediated) superconductors, there seems to be a widespread consensus that achieving A-SC may require different pairing mechanisms.
Spin-triplet superconductivity driven by finite-momentum spin fluctuations
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Dirac lines and loop at the Fermi level in the time-reversal symmetry breaking superconductor LaNiGa 2
Unconventional superconductors have Cooper pairs with lower symmetries than in conventional superconductors. In most unconventional superconductors, the additional symmetry breaking occurs in relation to typical ingredients such as strongly correlated Fermi liquid phases, magnetic fluctuations, or strong spin-orbit coupling in noncentrosymmetric structures. In this article, we show that the time-reversal symmetry breaking in the superconductor LaNiGa 2 is enabled by its previously unknown topological electronic band structure, with Dirac lines and a Dirac loop at the Fermi level. Two symmetry related Dirac points even remain degenerate under spin-orbit coupling. These unique topological features enable an unconventional superconducting gap in which time-reversal symmetry can be broken in the absence of other typical ingredients. Our findings provide a route to identify a new type of unconventional superconductors based on nonsymmorphic symmetries and will enable future discoveries of topological crystalline superconductors.
First-principles study of superconductivity in α and β gallium
Elemental gallium can exist in several phases under ambient pressure. The stable α phase has a superconducting transition temperature, T c , of 0.9 K. By contrast, the T c of the metastable β phase is around 6 K. To understand the significant improvement in T c in the β phase, we first calculate the electronic structure, phonon dispersion, and the electron-phonon coupling of gallium in the α and β phases. Next, we solve the Eliashberg equations to obtain the superconducting gaps and the transition temperatures. Additionally, using these results, we relate the increased T c in the β phase to structural differences between the phases that affect the electronic and phonon properties. The structure motif of the α phase is Ga 2 dimers, which form strong covalent bonds leading to bonding and antibonding states that reduce the density of states at the Fermi level. The β-Ga structure consists of arrays of Ga chains that favor strong coupling between the lattice vibrations and the electronic states near the Fermi level. The increased density of states and strong coupling to the phonons for the β-Ga chains compared to the αGa 2 dimers enhance superconductivity in the β-Ga phase.
A15 Nb 3 Si: a ‘high’ T c superconductor synthesized at a pressure of one megabar and metastable at ambient conditions
A15 Nb 3 Si is, until now, the only 'high' temperature superconductor produced at high pressure (~110 GPa) that has been successfully brought back to room pressure conditions in a metastable condition. Based on the current great interest in trying to create metastable-at-room-pressure high temperature superconductors produced at high pressure, we have restudied explosively compressed A15 Nb 3 Si and its production from tetragonal Nb 3 Si. First, diamond anvil cell pressure measurements up to 88 GPa were performed on explosively compressed A15 Nb 3 Si material to trace T c as a function of pressure. T c is suppressed to ~5.2 K at 88 GPa. Then, using these T c (P) data for A15 Nb 3 Si, pressures up to 92 GPa were applied at room temperature (which increased to 120 GPa at 5 K) on tetragonal Nb 3 Si. Measurements of the resistivity gave no indication of any A15 structure production, i.e. no indications of the superconductivity characteristic of A15 Nb 3 Si. This is in contrast to the explosive compression (up to P ~ 110 GPa) of tetragonal Nb 3 Si, which produced 50%–70% A15 material, T c = 18 K at ambient pressure, in a 1981 Los Alamos National Laboratory experiment. This implies that the accompanying high temperature (1000 °C) caused by explosive compression is necessary to successfully drive the reaction kinetics of the tetragonal → A15 Nb 3 Si structural transformation. Our theoretical calculations show that A15 Nb 3 Si has an enthalpy vs the tetragonal structure that is 70 meV atom –1 smaller at 100 GPa, while at ambient pressure the tetragonal phase enthalpy is lower than that of the A15 phase by 90 meV atom –1 . Furthermore, the fact that 'annealing' the A15 explosively compressed material at room temperature for 39 years has no effect shows that slow kinetics can stabilize high pressure metastable phases at ambient conditions over long times even for large driving forces of 90 meV atom –1 .