Discovery of Dome‐Shaped Superconducting Phase and Anisotropic Transport in a van der Waals Layered Candidate NbIrTe₄ under Pressure

Abstract

The unique electronic structure and crystal structure driven by external pressure in transition metal tellurides (TMTs) can host unconventional quantum states. Here, the discovery of pressure‐induced phase transition at ≈2 GPa, and dome‐shaped superconducting phase emerged in van der Waals layered NbIrTe4 is reported. The highest critical temperature (Tc) is ≈5.8 K at pressure of ≈16 GPa, where the interlayered Te–Te covalent bonds form simultaneously derived from the synchrotron diffraction data, indicating the hosting structure of superconducting evolved from low‐pressure two‐dimensional (2D) phase to three‐dimensional (3D) structure with pressure higher than 30 GPa. Strikingly, the authors have found an anisotropic transport in the vicinity of the superconducting state, suggesting the emergence of a “stripe”‐like phase. The dome‐shaped superconducting phase and anisotropic transport are possibly due to the spatial modulation of interlayer Josephson coupling .

A theoretical roadmap for the best oxygen reduction activity in two-dimensional transition metal tellurides

“…The dynamic stability of the monolayers was confirmed from their computed phonon frequencies, as reported in Materials Cloud two-dimensional crystals databases 39 and database C2DB 40 of 2D materials. The calculated band structures and density of states (DOS) of the above nanosheets reveal that NbIrTe 4 is semi-metallic with a zero bandgap that exhibits metallic behaviors, 41 and the other nanosheets are well-defined metals (Fig. S2 † ).…”