A group of scientists led by Artem Oganov of Skoltech and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and Ivan Troyan of the Institute of Crystallography of RAS has succeeded in synthesizing thorium decahydride (ThH10), a new superconducting material with the very high critical temperature of 161 kelvins.
The team’s findings corroborated the theoretical predictions in 2018 of Alexander Kvashnin, a researcher at Oganov’s lab, proving that ThH10 exists at pressures above 0.85 million atmospheres and exhibits amazing high-temperature superconductivity. The scientists could only determine the critical temperature at 0.7 million atmospheres and found it to be −112°C, which is consistent with the theoretical prediction for that pressure value. This makes ThH10 one of the record-breaking high-temperature superconductors. (Materials Today)