Pressure-induced vibrational and superconducting properties of lanthanum hydrides from first principles calculations

Abstract

Pressure-induced vibrational and superconducting properties of lanthanum hydrides (LaH2 and LaH3) have been studied using first principles calculations. It is found that LaH2 and LaH3 are dynamically stable in the pressure ranges of 0–39 GPa and 4–35 GPa, respectively. The character of phonon dispersion curves for LaH2 and LaH3 is analyzed under pressure. The zone-center phonon mode eigen displacements that represent infrared and Raman activity are also obtained, which are essential to the analysis of spectral experiments. The calculations based on Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer theory indicate that LaH2 almost has no superconducting behavior even under pressure, in reasonable agreement with previous theoretical calculations and experiments. Whereas, LaH3 presents a considerable high superconducting transition temperature (Tc) at the onset of the face centered cubic structure, while it decreases exponentially under further compression up to 25 GPa and finally almost approaches zero. Further analysis indicates that the underlying mechanism of these two distinct superconducting behaviors are closely related to the hybridization between the HO-s state and La-d state. The mode Grüneisen parameters of two hydrides are also analyzed under 35 GPa, finding that the hydrogen atoms at octahedral sites are responsible for the superconducting properties of LaH3, and in fact, the unobserved superconducting behavior in LaH2 can be interpreted as the absence of hydrogen at octahedral sites compared with LaH3.