Incipient superconductivity in TaB$_{2}$

Magnetic properties of TaB$_{2}$ were studied by means of DC and AC susceptibility measurements. It has been found that the compound becomes superconducting at T$_{c}$ = 9.5 K. From upper critical field measurements the superconducting parameters have been evaluated, which indicated that TaB$_{2}$ is a hard type-II superconductor. Possible reasons why superconductivity has not been discovered in previous studies are briefly discussed.