Structure and superconductive properties of the high-pressure phase in the technetium-hydrogen system

The reaction of technetium and hydrogen was studied previously. It was shown that the solubility of hydrogen in this metal rises significantly as the pressure increases, reaching a hydrogen-metal atomic ratio of n = 0.73 +/- 0.05 when P/sub H2/ = 19 kbar and T = 3000C. However, the studies presented were limited to samples that were saturated with hydrogen at P/sub H2/ > 5 kbar, and already had quite a high hydrogen content, n > 0.5. It is of interest to study what happens in a Tc-H system at lower pressures and lower hydrogen contents. Furthermore, technetium is a superconductor (its transition temperature to the superconductive state is one of the highest, T/sub K/ approx. 80K, of all the elements, so that the study of T/sub K/(n) for solid Tc-H solutions was attractive. The present work is devoted to that problem