Structures and potential superconductivity in at high pressure: en route to "metallic hydrogen"

Phys Rev Lett. 2006 Jan 13;96(1):017006. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.017006. Epub 2006 Jan 11.

Abstract

A way to circumvent the high pressures needed to metallize hydrogen is to "precompress" it in hydrogen-rich molecules, a strategy probed theoretically for silane. We show that phases with tetrahedral SiH4 molecules should undergo phase transitions with sixfold- and eightfold-coordinate Si appearing above 25 GPa. The most stable structure found can be metallized at under a megabar and at a compression close to the prediction of Goldhammer-Herzfeld criterion. According to a BCS-like estimate, metallic silane should be a high-temperature superconductor.