DOE OSTI2023
Pursuit of superconductivity in light-element systems at ambient pressure is of great experimental and theoretical interest. In this work, we combine a machine learning (ML) method with first-principles calculations to efficiently search for the energetically favorable ternary Ca-B-C compounds. Three layered borocarbides (stable CaBC 5 and metastable Ca 2 BC 11 and CaB 3 C 3 ) are predicted to be phonon-mediated superconductors at ambient pressure. The stable CaBC 5 and the low-energy metastable Ca 2 BC 11 (with formation energy only 9.5 meV/atom above the convex hull) have a superconducting T c of 5.2 and 8.9 K, respectively. While the hexagonal CaB 3 C 3 possesses a T c of 26.1 K, it is metastable with formation energy of 153 meV/atom above the convex hull. The ML-guided approach opens up a way for greatly accelerating the discovery of new high-T c superconductors.