Characterising high-Tc hydride tunnel junctions at high pressure

In the last few years, a whole new class of superconducting hydrides, synthesised under intense pressures, have been discovered with Tc values up to 250K in LaH10. While this nascent field has sparked the public’s imagination and attracted much interest from the condensed matter community, the mechanism of hydride superconductivity remains unresolved, thus inhibiting efforts to identify viable routes towards their optimisation. We will measure for the first time the pairing energy of superconducting hydride compounds LaH10 and La4H23, respectively, by single electron tunelling spectroscopy. To do so, we will build planar high-Tc hydride superconducting tunnel junctions in diamond anvil cells. We will use x-ray powder diffraction to characterise the crystal structure of the hydride compounds of the tunnel junctions. This is a crucial step in order to assign the electronic properties measured by tunelling spectroscopy to the right superconducting phase.