Chemical templates that assemble the metal superhydrides

Abstract

The recent discoveries of many metal superhydrides provide a new route to room-temperature superconductors. However, their stability and structure trends and the large chemical driving force needed to dissociate H2 molecules and form H covalent network cannot be explained by direct metal-hydrogen bonds and volume effect. Here, we demonstrate that the understanding of superhydrides formation needs a perspective beyond traditional chemical bond theory. Using high-throughput calculations, we show that, after removing H atoms, the remaining metal lattices exhibit large electron localization at the interstitial regions, which matches excellently to the H lattice like a template. Furthermore, H lattices consist of 3D aromatic building units that are greatly stabilized by chemical templates of metals close to s-d border. The chemical template theory can naturally explain the stability and structure trends of superhydrides and help to predict new materials such as two-metal superhydrides.