Crystal Structure Design and Synthesis of Noncentrosymmetric Superconductors in Intercalation-Induced Transition Metal Dichalcogenides

Abstract

In this paper, we have performed a crystal structure screening and properties prediction framework within the noncentrosymmetric AMX 2 system, which arises from the intercalation of elements in transition metal dichalcogenides. After rigorous evaluations of thermodynamic and dynamic stability, we have refined our initial structure pool of 504 crystals to a focused set of 48 promising candidates. Analysis of their electronic properties has revealed that 23 of these crystals exhibit semiconducting behavior. The results on electron−phonon coupling and band calculations indicate that most of the remaining 25 crystals are superconducting topological nodal line or Weyl semimetals. Additionally, we find that β-InNbSe 2 in the AMX 2 family can serve as an excellent candidate to explore topological nodal lines and Lifshitz transitions. Furthermore, we also extended the thermodynamic stability analysis to higher temperatures. Ultimately, we have successfully synthesized β-InNbSe 2 with a stoichiometric ratio of 1:1:2 experimentally and characterized its superconducting properties. This study represents a systematic foray into the identification of new superconducting and topological materials within the noncentrosymmetric AMX 2 family. This screening framework can be extended to other quasi two-dimensional systems.