Physical Origin of Color Changes in Lutetium Hydride under Pressure

Recently,near-ambient superconductivity was claimed in nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride(LuH_(3-δ)N_(ε)).Unfortunately,all follow-up research still cannot find superconductivity signs in successfully synthesized lutetium dihydride(LuH_(2)) and N-doped LuH_(2±x)N_(y).However,a similar intriguing observation was the pressure-induced color changes(from blue to pink and subsequent red).The physical understanding of its origin and the correlation between the color,crystal structure,and chemical composition of Lu–H–N is still lacking.In this work,we systematically investigated the optical properties of LuH_(2) and LuH_(3),and the effects of hydrogen vacancies and nitrogen doping using the first-principles calculations by considering both interband and intraband contributions.Our results demonstrate that the evolution of reflectivity peaks near blue and red light,which is driven by changes in the band gap and Fermi velocity of free electrons,resulting in the blue-to-red color change under pressure.In contrast,LuH_(3) exhibits gray and no color change up to 50 GPa.Furthermore,we investigated the effects of hydrogen vacancies and nitrogen doping on its optical properties.Hydrogen vacancies can significantly decrease the pressure of blue-to-red color change in LuH_(2) but do not have a noticeable effect on the color of LuH_(3).The N-doped LuH_(2) with the substitution of a hydrogen atom at the tetrahedral position maintains the color change when the N-doping concentration is low.As the doping level increases,this trend becomes less obvious,while other N-doped structures do not show a blue-to-red color change.Our results can clarify the origin of the experimental observed blue-to-red color change in lutetium hydride and also provide a further understanding of the potential N-doped lutetium dihydride.

Charge Density Wave States and Structural Transition in Layered Chalcogenide TaSe_(2-x)Te_x

The structural features and three-dimensional nature of the charge density wave （CDW） state of the layered chalcogenide 1T-TaSe2-xTex （0≤x≤2.0） are characterized by Cs-corrected transmission electron microscopy measurements. Notable changes of both average structure and the CDW state arising from Te substitution for Se are clearly demonstrated in samples with x〉0.3. The commensurate CDW state characterized by the known star-of-David clustering in the 1T-TaSe2 crystal becomes visibly unstable with Te substitution and vanishes when x=0.3. The 1T-TaSe2-xTex （0.3≤x≤1.3） samples generally adopt a remarkable incommensurate CDW state with monoclinic distortion, which could be fundamentally in correlation with the strong qq-dependent electron-phonon coupling-induced period-lattice-distortion as identified in TaTe22. Systematic analysis demonstrates that the occurrence of superconductivity is related to the suppression of the commensurate CDW phase and the presence of discommensuration is an evident structural feature observed in the superconducting samples.