Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Comment
  • Published:

Hydride superconductivity is here to stay

Nature Reviews Physics volume 7, pages 2–3 (2025)Cite this article

Subjects

One of the forefront fields of modern superconductivity research is that on hydrides at high pressures. Over the past few years, this research has attracted considerable publicity, of which a substantial fraction has been negative. Scientific fraud has been committed and exposed, and arguments continue about specific aspects of data presented in some other papers. Among all the noise that is being generated, one might lose sight of the big-picture question of whether the field is on solid foundations or not, that is, whether high-pressure hydrides host superconductivity at all. Here, we readdress this central issue. We select and critically examine what we identify as six key papers on the topic. We have all spent substantial portions of our careers working on superconductivity, so hope that the conclusions that we reach will carry at least some weight. We also decided to include among our authorship team only people who have never worked directly on hydride superconductivity, so that our examination of the scientific facts can be as impartial as possible. We conclude that it is overwhelmingly probable that the phenomenon of hydride superconductivity is genuine.

What most people would regard as the breakthrough paper in hydride superconductivity was published in 2015 by the group at the Max Planck Institute in Mainz1. It described the extreme compression of H2S to pressures over one million times higher than that of our atmosphere, and the observation of a transition reported to be superconductivity at approximately 200 K, attributed to the formation of H3S. This famous work was followed by experiments in which mixtures of hydrogen and metal atoms were both compressed and heated, creating in situ chemical reactions to form compounds directly in the pressure cells, which were subsequently cooled to check for signs of superconductivity.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Key measurements of multiple samples of H3S at different pressures.

References

  1. Drozdov, A. P., Eremets, M. I., Troyan, I. A., Ksenofontov, V. & Shylin, S. I. Conventional superconductivity at 203 kelvin at high pressures in the sulfur hydride system. Nature 525, 73–76 (2015).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  2. Bhattacharyya, P. et al. Imaging the Meissner effect in hydride superconductors using quantum sensors. Nature 627, 73–79 (2024).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  3. Li, Z. et al. Superconductivity above 200 K discovered in superhydrides of calcium. Nat. Commun. 13, 2863 (2022).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  4. Mozaffari, S. et al. Superconducting phase diagram of H3S under high magnetic fields. Nat. Commun. 10, 2522 (2019).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. Osmond, I. et al. Clean-limit superconductivity in \(\mathrm{Im}\bar{3}m\) H3S synthesized from sulfur and hydrogen donor ammonia borane. Phys. Rev. B 105, L220502 (2022).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  6. Eremets, M. I. et al. High-temperature superconductivity in hydrides: experimental evidence and details. J. Supercond. Nov. Magn. 35, 965–977 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    Gregory S. Boebinger

  2. University of Minnesota, School of Physics & Astronomy, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Andrey V. Chubukov

  3. Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials and Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Ian R. Fisher

  4. Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    Ian R. Fisher

  5. University of Cambridge, Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, UK

    F. Malte Grosche

  6. University of Florida, Department of Physics, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Peter J. Hirschfeld

  7. University of Toronto, Department of Physics, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Stephen R. Julian

  8. Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgart, Germany

    Bernhard Keimer

  9. Stanford University, Department of Physics, Stanford, CA, USA

    Steven A. Kivelson

  10. Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden, Germany

    Andrew P. Mackenzie

  11. University of St Andrews, School of Physics & Astronomy, SUPA, St Andrews, Fife, UK

    Andrew P. Mackenzie

  12. Kyoto University, Toyota Riken–Kyoto University Research Center, Kyoto, Japan

    Yoshiteru Maeno

  13. University of California at Berkeley, Department of Physics, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Joseph Orenstein

  14. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Materials Sciences Division, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Joseph Orenstein

  15. Cornell University, Laboratory of Atomic & Solid State Physics, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Brad J. Ramshaw

  16. Harvard University, Department of Physics, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Subir Sachdev

  17. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute of Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Joerg Schmalian

  18. Technical University of Dresden, Institute of Theoretical Physics & Wurzburg Dresden Cluster of Excellence, Dresden, Germany

    Matthias Vojta

Authors
  1. Gregory S. Boebinger
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Andrey V. Chubukov
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Ian R. Fisher
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  4. F. Malte Grosche
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Peter J. Hirschfeld
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Stephen R. Julian
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Bernhard Keimer
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Steven A. Kivelson
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Andrew P. Mackenzie
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  10. Yoshiteru Maeno
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  11. Joseph Orenstein
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  12. Brad J. Ramshaw
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  13. Subir Sachdev
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  14. Joerg Schmalian
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  15. Matthias Vojta
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Andrew P. Mackenzie or Joerg Schmalian.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Boebinger, G.S., Chubukov, A.V., Fisher, I.R. et al. Hydride superconductivity is here to stay. Nat Rev Phys 7, 2–3 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-024-00794-1

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Version of record:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-024-00794-1

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing