Superconductivity of uranium super-hydrides: A high Tc actinide superconductor at moderate pressures

High pressure super-hydride compounds provide a promising avenue to finding room-temperature superconductivity. At this time, the LaH10 phase possesses the highest superconducting transition temperature, Tc = 250K observed experimentally at a pressure of 200 GPa. The next step is to find new high Tc hydride superconductors at lower pressures. The higher order uranium poly-hydride phases have been experimentally observed to be dynamically stable at moderate pressures (hcp-UH7 at 36 GPa), and predicted to become superconducting at temperatures ≈ 55 K, but this needs to be confirmed experimentally. Our DACs offer the ability to perform XRD and electrical transport measurements on the same sample, allowing for precise mapping of the structure and therefore an accurate identification of the phase(s) responsible for superconductivity.