Topological superconductivity and large spin Hall effect in the kagome family Ti6X4 (X = Bi, Sb, Pb, Tl, In)

Abstract

Topological superconductors (TSC) become a focus of research due to the accompanying Majorana fermions. However, the experimentally reported TSC are extremely rare. The recent experiments reported the kagome TSC AV$_{3}$Sb$_{5}$ (A=K, Rb, Cs), which exhibit unique superconductivity, topological surface states (TSS), and Majorana bound states. More recently, the first titanium-based kagome superconductor CsTi$ _{3} $Bi$ _{5} $ with nontrivial topology was successfully synthesized as a perspective TSC. Given that Cs contributes little to the electronic structures of CsTi$ _{3} $Bi$ _{5} $ and binary compounds may be easier to be synthesized, here, by density functional theory calculations, we predict five stable non-magnetic kagome compounds Ti$ _{6} $X$ _{4} $ (X = Bi, Sb, Pb, Tl, In) which exhibit superconductivity with critical temperature Tc = 3.8$ - $5.1 K, nontrivial $\mathbb{Z}$$_2$ band topology, and TSS close to the Fermi level. In addition, the large intrinsic spin Hall effect is obtained in Ti$ _{6} $X$ _{4} $, which is caused by gapped Dirac nodes and nodal lines due to a strong spin-orbit coupling. This work offers new platforms for TSC and spintronic devices.