On the high-pressure superconducting phase in platinum hydride

Abstract

Motivated by the ambiguous experimental data for the superconducting phase in silane (SiH$_{4}$), which may originate from the platinum hydride (PtH), we provide a theoretical study of the superconducting state in the latter alloy. The quantitative estimates of the thermodynamics of PtH at 100 GPa are given for a wide range of the Coulomb pseudopotential values ($\mu^{*}$) within the Eliashberg formalism. The obtained critical temperature value ($T_C\in\left<12.94, 20.01\right>$ for $\mu^{*}\in\left<0.05,0.15\right>$) agrees well with the experimental $T_{C}$ for SiH$_{4}$ which may be ascribed to PtH. Moreover, the calculated characteristic thermodynamic ratios exceed the predictions of the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory, implying occurrence of the strong-coupling and retardation effects in PtH. We note that our results can be of high relevance for the future studies on hydrides.