Superconductivity Induced by Site-Selective Arsenic Doping in Mo5Si3

Bin-Bin Ruan; Jun-Nan Sun; Meng-Hu Zhou; Qing-Song Yang; Ya-Dong Gu; Gen-Fu Chen; Lei Shan; Zhi-An Ren

doi:10.1021/acs.inorgchem.2c01647

Superconductivity Induced by Site-Selective Arsenic Doping in Mo₅Si₃

Inorg Chem. 2022 Jul 11;61(27):10267-10271. doi: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.2c01647. Epub 2022 Jun 28.

Authors

Bin-Bin Ruan¹, Jun-Nan Sun^{2

3}, Meng-Hu Zhou¹, Qing-Song Yang^{1

4}, Ya-Dong Gu^{1

4}, Gen-Fu Chen^{1

4

5}, Lei Shan^{2

3}, Zhi-An Ren^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Physics and Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
² Information Materials and Intelligent Sensing Laboratory of Anhui Province, Institutes of Physical Science and Information Technology, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China.
³ Key Laboratory of Structure and Functional Regulation of Hybrid Materials (Anhui University), Ministry of Education, Hefei 230601, China.
⁴ School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
⁵ Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, Dongguan, Guangdong 523808, China.

PMID: 35763831
DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.2c01647

Abstract

Arsenic doping in silicides has been much less studied compared with phosphorus. In this study, superconductivity is successfully induced by As doping in Mo₅Si₃. The superconducting transition temperature (T_c) reaches 7.7 K, which is higher than those in previously known W₅Si₃-type superconductors. Mo₅Si₂As is a type-II BCS superconductor with upper and lower critical fields of 6.65 T and 22.4 mT, respectively. In addition, As atoms are found to selectively take the 8h sites in Mo₅Si₂As. The emergence of superconductivity is possibly due to the shift of Fermi level as a consequence of As doping, as revealed by the specific heat measurements and first-principles calculations. Our work provides not only another example of As doping but also a practical strategy to achieve superconductivity in silicides through Fermi level engineering.