title: Tellurium Hydrides at High Pressures: High-Temperature Superconductors.
abstract: Observation of high-temperature superconductivity in compressed sulfur hydrides has generated an irresistible wave of searches for new hydrogen-containing superconductors. We herein report the prediction of high-T_{c} superconductivity in tellurium hydrides stabilized at megabar pressures identified by first-principles calculations in combination with a swarm structure search. Although tellurium is isoelectronic to sulfur or selenium, its heavier atomic mass and weaker electronegativity makes tellurium hydrides fundamentally distinct from sulfur or selenium hydrides in stoichiometries, structures, and chemical bondings. We identify three metallic stoichiometries of H_{4}Te, H_{5}Te_{2}, and HTe_{3}, which are not predicted or known stable structures for sulfur or selenium hydrides. The two hydrogen-rich H_{4}Te and H_{5}Te_{2} phases are primarily ionic and contain exotic quasimolecular H_{2} and linear H_{3} units, respectively. Their high-T_{c} (e.g., 104 K for H_{4}Te at 170 GPa) superconductivity originates from the strong electron-phonon couplings associated with intermediate-frequency H-derived wagging and bending modes, a superconducting mechanism which differs substantially with those in sulfur or selenium hydrides where the high-frequency H-stretching vibrations make considerable contributions.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Superhard Materials, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China.
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhong
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Superhard Materials, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China.
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Superhard Materials, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China.
authors.forename: Jurong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Superhard Materials, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China.
authors.forename: Hanyu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Superhard Materials, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China.
authors.forename: Shoutao
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Computational Physics, Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics, Beijing 100088, China.|CAEP Software Center for High Performance Numerical Simulation, Beijing 100088, China.
authors.forename: Hai-Feng
authors.initials: HF
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Superhard Materials, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China.|Faculty of Chemistry, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China.
authors.forename: Guochun
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Superhard Materials, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China.|College of Materials Science and Engineering and Key Laboratory of Automobile Materials of MOE, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China.
authors.forename: Lijun
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Superhard Materials, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China.
authors.forename: Yanming
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ma