Possible superconductivity in hole-doped BC3 -: art. no. 212507

In this work the superconducting transition temperature of hole-doped BC3 was studied. The total energy, phonon frequencies, and electron-phonon couplings were calculated for different hole doping levels using the ab initio pseudopotential method within the local density approximation. The harmonic and anharmonic phonon frequencies were calculated by using the frozen-phonon approximation. As in MgB2, the electron-phonon coupling between the electronic states in the sigma bands and phonon modes associated with bond stretching was found to be very strong. The calculation predicts that the superconducting temperature will increase as a function of doping level.