Title:	Effect of Uniaxial strain on electron-phonon coupling and super-conducting properties of ZrB2
DNr:	SNIC 2020/5-546
Project Type:	SNIC Medium Compute
Principal Investigator:	Per Eklund <per.eklund@liu.se>
Affiliation:	Linköpings universitet
Duration:	2020-10-28 – 2021-11-01
Classification:	10304 10403
Keywords:

Abstract

The discovery of high superconducting transition temperature (~39 K) in magnesium di-borides (MgB2) [1], motivated researcher for the study of superconductivity in other transition metal borides such as ZrB2, ScB2, TiB2, NbB2, MoB2, WB2 etc [2,3,4]. Recent studies reveals that ZrB2, a non-superconducting material, shows superconductivity upon V or Nb doping. Incorporation of 4% of V or Nb transform ZrB2 into a multiband superconductor with a transition temperature of 5.5 K and 8.1 K, respectively[5]. Upon incorporation of V and Nb, the lattice parameters of ZrB2 decreases, and compressive strain is introduced in the parent lattice. However, little is known about impact from the doping induced strain on the superconductivity in ZrB2. In this proposed project, we aim to investigate the effect from the uniaxial compressive strain on the electronic structure, phonon dispersion and electron-phonon coupling in strained ZrB2. Finally, by solving the anisotropic Migdal-Eliashberg equation we will estimate superconducting transition temperature upon doping in ZrB2. A theoretical mechanism and correlation between superconductivity and strain are expected to be derived within this project. Reference 1. J. Akimitsu et al., Nature, 410, 6364(2001) 2. G.L. Bhalla et al., J. of Appl. Phys. 105, 07E313 (2009) 3. A. N. Alexandrova et al., J. Mater. Chem. C 7, 10700 (2019) 4. R J Cava et al., Supercond. Sci. Technol. 31, 115005 (2018) 5. J. Mesot et al., Phys. Rev. B 95, 094505 (2017)