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Updated: Feb 11, 2026

Fabrication and Characterization of Superconducting Resonators
Published on: May 21, 2016
Possible superconductivity in the Bismuth IV solid phase under pressure
Ariel A Valladares1, Isaías Rodríguez2, David Hinojosa-Romero3
1Instituto de Investigaciones en Materiales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Apartado Postal 70-360, Ciudad Universitaria, CDMX, 04510, México. valladar@unam.mx.
Abstract:
The first successful theory of superconductivity was the one proposed by Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer in 1957. This breakthrough fostered a remarkable growth of the field that propitiated progress and questionings, generating alternative theories to explain specific phenomena. For example, it has been argued that Bismuth, being a semimetal with a low number of carriers, does not comply with the basic hypotheses underlying BCS and therefore a different approach should be considered. Nevertheless, in 2016 based on BCS we put forth a prediction that Bi at ambient pressure becomes a superconductor at 1.3 mK. A year later an experimental group corroborated that in fact Bi is a superconductor with a transition temperature of 0.53 mK, a result that eluded previous work. So, since Bi is superconductive in almost all the different structures and phases, the question is why Bi-IV has been elusive and has not been found yet to superconduct? Here we present a study of the electronic and vibrational properties of Bi-IV and infer its possible superconductivity using a BCS approach. We predict that if the Bi-IV phase structure were cooled down to liquid helium temperatures it would also superconduct at a T c of 4.25 K.
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