One of the greatest unsolved challenges in science is to create room-temperature superconductors. The discovery of superconductivity above 250 K in superhydrides stimulated studies for a better understanding of the hydrogen interaction mechanism with the heavy atom sublattice under high pressure at the atomic scale.
A collaboration between the Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia (Juris Purans, Inga Pudza, Alexei Kuzmin) and several world-leading centres as National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute) Moscow, Russia., Max-Planck Institut für Chemie (Mainz, Germany), MAX IV Laboratory (Lund, Sweden), European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (Grenoble, France), European X-Ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) GmbH (Schenefeld, Germany) and Geodynamics Research Center, Ehime University (Matsuyama, Japan) resulted in the article published in the Nature Communications journal (https://www.nature.com/ncomms/) with an impact factor of 12.121!
In the article J. Purans, A. P. Menushenkov, S. P. Besedin, A. A. Ivanov, V. S. Minkov, I. Pudza, A. Kuzmin, K. V. Klementiev, S. Pascarelli, O. Mathon, A. D. Rosa, T. Irifune, M. I. Eremets, Local electronic structure rearrangements and strong anharmonicity in YH3 under pressures up to 180 GPa, Nature Communications 12 (2021) 1765 (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21991-x), the authors used locally sensitive X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XANES/EXAFS) together with X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy to get insight into the nature of phase transitions and the rearrangements of local electronic and crystal structure in archetypal metal hydride YH3 under pressure up to 180 GPa. Evidence of a strong effect of hydrogen on the density increase of 4d yttrium states and strong anharmonic vibrations of yttrium atoms in YH3 have been discovered. These results will contribute to a better understanding of the hydrogen interaction mechanism with the heavy atom sublattice and high-temperature superconductivity in metal hydrides.
The work was partially supported by the Latvian Council of Science project No. lzp-2018/2-0353.
