Superconductivity in noncentrosymmetric iridium silicide LiIrSi

Pyon, S.*; Kudo, Kazutaka*; Matsumura, Junichi*; Ishii, Hiroyuki*; Matsuo, Genta*; Nohara, Minoru*; Hojo, Hajime*; Oka, Kengo*; Azuma, Masaki*; Garlea, V. O.*; Kodama, Katsuaki   ; Shamoto, Shinichi  

The effects of lithium absorption on the crystal structure and electronic properties of IrSi, a binary silicide with a noncentrosymmetric crystal structure, were studied. X-ray and neutron diffraction experiments revealed that hexagonal IrSi (space group ) transforms into trigonal LiIrSi (space group ) upon lithium absorption. The structure of LiIrSi is found to consist of a planar kagome network of silicon atoms with Li and Ir spaced at unequal distances between the kagome layers, resulting in a polar structure along the c-axis. LiIrSi exhibited type-II superconductivity with a transition temperature of 3.8 K, displaying a structure type that no previous superconductors have been reported to have.