Tunable electron-phonon coupling superconductivity in platinum diselenide

The superconducting property of platinum diselenide (PtSe2), being a type-II Dirac semimetal, doped with electron and hole carriers has been investigated by first-principles calculations. It is found that the superconducting transition temperature Tc of pristine PtSe2 is very low (≤0.002 K), making it infeasible as a practical superconductor. The electron doping is an effective way to increases the Tc of PtSe2 to 2.15 K at 0.5e- per unit cell. We further find that the mechanism of superconducting transition is the acoustic branch vibration mode softening rather than the Fermi surface nesting. Our results provide an important clue to increase superconducting temperature in the heavy transition-metal dichalcogenides and shed light on searching for new superconducting topological semimetals.