Discovery of Cu3Pb |
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| Authors: | Alexandra D Tamerius Dr Samantha M Clarke Dr Mingqiang Gu Dr James P S Walsh Dr Marco Esters Dr Yue Meng Prof Christopher H Hendon Prof James M Rondinelli Prof Steven D Jacobsen Prof Danna E Freedman |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA;2. Physical and Life Sciences Directorate, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA;3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA;4. Center for Materials Genomics, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA;5. HPCAT, Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institute of Washington, Argonne, IL, USA;6. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA;7. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA |
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| Abstract: | Materials discovery enables both realization and understanding of new, exotic, physical phenomena. An emerging approach to the discovery of novel phases is high‐pressure synthesis within diamond anvil cells, thereby enabling in situ monitoring of phase formation. Now, the discovery via high‐pressure synthesis of the first intermetallic compound in the Cu‐Pb system, Cu3Pb is reported. Cu3Pb is notably the first structurally characterized mid‐ to late‐first‐row transition‐metal plumbide. The structure of Cu3Pb can be envisioned as a direct mixture of the two elemental lattices. From this new framework, we gain insight into the structure as a function of pressure and hypothesize that the high‐pressure polymorph of lead is a possible prerequisite for the formation of Cu3Pb. Crucially, electronic structure computations reveal band crossings near the Fermi level, suggesting that chemically doped Cu3Pb could be a topologically nontrivial material. |
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| Keywords: | diamond anvil cells high-pressure synthesis intermetallic compounds metastable materials X-ray crystallography |
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