A New Superconducting 3R-WS2 Phase at High Pressure

Wenting Zhang; Yuqiang Fang; Zihan Zhang; Fubo Tian; Yanping Huang; Xin Wang; Xiaoli Huang; Fuqiang Huang; Tian Cui

doi:10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c00312

A New Superconducting 3R-WS₂ Phase at High Pressure

J Phys Chem Lett. 2021 Apr 8;12(13):3321-3327. doi: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c00312. Epub 2021 Mar 26.

Authors

Wenting Zhang¹, Yuqiang Fang², Zihan Zhang¹, Fubo Tian¹, Yanping Huang³, Xin Wang¹, Xiaoli Huang¹, Fuqiang Huang², Tian Cui^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Superhard Materials, College of Physics, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China.
² State Key Laboratory of High Performance Ceramics and Superfine Microstructure, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China.
³ School of Physical Science and Technology, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211, China.

PMID: 33769817
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c00312

Abstract

High-pressure investigation has been shown to be of paramount significance for changing the conventional lattice or bringing fascinating properties, especially inducing superconducting phases. Here we studied the application of pressure to the recently synthesized 2M-WS₂ with the record T_c (8.8 K) among transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) at ambient pressure by electrical resistance investigations, synchrotron X-ray studies, and theoretical calculations. T_c in the initial 2M-WS₂ dropped from the maximum to become undetected, accompanied by a phase transition into a semiconductor, 3R-WS₂, at 15 GPa. The successive metallization and superconducting transitions in 3R-WS₂ were observed at 48.8 GPa with T_c ≈ 2.5 K. This is the first experimental case in which superconductivity has been realized in the 3R phase among TMDs. We propose that the degradation of superconductivity in 2M-WS₂ and the reemergence of superconductivity in 3R-WS₂ are mainly attributable to changes in the density of states near the Fermi surface driven by the interlayer coupling.