Effect of nitrogen doping and pressure on the stability of LuH$_3$

Abstract

The report on the near-ambient superconductivity in a nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride has stimulated great interest in this material (Dasenbrock-Gammon et al. 2023). While its superconductivity is still a subject of debate, the structure of the claimed cubic phase remains uncertain. In this work, we study the effect of nitrogen doping and pressure on the energetic and dynamic stability of cubic LuH3. Our findings indicate that both pressure and nitrogen doping can enhance the stability of the cubic LuH3 phase. We propose a Lu8H21N structure that exhibits stable phonon, reasonable thermodynamic stability at 1 GPa, and a similar XRD pattern to the experimental data. However, we do not observe electron-phonon coupling in the zone-center phonon modes of these crystal structures.