Superconductivity in doped cubic silicon: An ab initio study.

The authors study within a first-principles approach the band structure, vibrational modes, and electron-phonon coupling in boron-, aluminum-, and phosphorus-doped silicon in the diamond phase. Their results provide evidences that the recently discovered superconducting transition in boron-doped cubic silicon, with a transition temperature of ∼0.34 K, can be explained within a standard phonon-mediated mechanism. The importance of lattice compression and dopant related stretching modes are emphasized. The authors find that T_C can be increased by one order of magnitude by adopting aluminum doping instead of boron. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]