The vital role of hole-carriers for superconductivity in pressurized black phosphorus
cond-mat.supr-con
/ Authors
Jing Guo, Honghong Wang, Fabian von Rohr, Wei Yi, Yazhou Zhou, Zhe Wang, Shu Cai, Shan Zhang, Xiaodong Li, Yanchuan Li
and 8 more authors
Jing Liu, Ke Yang, Aiguo Li, Sheng Jiang, Qi Wu, Tao Xiang, Robert J Cava, Liling Sun
/ Abstract
The influence of carrier type on superconductivity has been an important issue for understanding both conventional and unconventional superconductors [1-7]. For elements that superconduct, it is known that hole-carriers govern the superconductivity for transition and main group metals [8-10]. The role of hole-carriers in elements that are not normally conducting but can be converted to superconductors, however, remains unclear due to the lack of experimental data. Here we report the first in-situ high pressure Hall effect measurements on single crystal black phosphorus, measured up to ~ 50 GPa, and find a correlation between the Hall coefficient and the superconducting transition temperature (TC). Our results reveal that hole-carriers play a vital role in developing superconductivity and enhancing TC. Importantly, we also find a Lifshitz transition in the high-pressure cubic phase at ~17.2GPa, which uncovers the origin of a puzzling valley in the superconducting TC-pressure phase diagram. These results offer insight into the role of hole-carriers in developing superconductivity in simple semiconducting solids under pressure.