Our work has just been published in Physical Review B !
In this theoretical work, we studied in detail the electron-phonon superconductivity of honeycomb MX
layered structures where X is one element of group IV (C, Si, or Ge) and M is an alkali or an alkaline-earth metal. Among the studied compositions we predict a novel compounds energetically stable and showing relatively high transition temperatures of superconductivity: 7 K in RbGe
, 9 K in RbSi
, and 11 K in SrC
. All these compounds feature a strongly anisotropic superconducting gap. Our results show that despite the different doping levels and structural properties, the three families of materials fall into a similar description of their superconducting behavior. This allows us to estimate an upper critical temperature of about 20 K for the class of intercalated group-IV structures, including intercalated graphite and doped graphene.