Hydrides are considered to be one of the most promising families of compounds for achieving high temperature superconductivity. However, there are very few experimental reports of ambient-pressure hydride superconductivity, and the superconducting critical temperatures (T ₂) are typically less than 10 K. At the same time several hydrides have been predicted to exhibit superconductivity around 100 K at ambient pressure but in thermodynamically unfavorable phases. In this work we aim at assessing the superconducting properties of thermodynamically stable hydride superconductors at room pressure by investigating the GNoME material database, which has been recently released and includes thousands of hydrides thermodynamically stable at 0K. To scan this large material space we have adopted a multi stage approach which combines machine learning for a fast initial evaluation and cutting edge ab initio methods to obtain a reliable estimation of (T ₂). Ultimately we have identified 22 cubic hydrides with (T ₂) above 4. 2~K and reach a maximum (T ₂) of 17 K. While these critical temperatures are modest in comparison to some recent predictions, the systems where they are found, being stable, are likely to be experimentally accessible and of potential technological relevance.
Sanna et al. (Wed,) studied this question.