0000000000164559
AUTHOR
Gaston Garbarino
High-pressure study of the behavior of mineral barite by x-ray diffraction
In this paper, we report the angle-dispersive x-ray diffraction data of barite, BaSO 4, measured in a diamond-anvil cell up to a pressure of 48 GPa, using three different fluid pressure-transmitting media (methanol-ethanol mixture, silicone oil, and He). Our results show that BaSO 4 exhibits a phase transition at pressures that range from 15 to 27 GPa, depending on the pressure media used. This indicates that nonhydrostatic stresses have a crucial role in the high-pressure behavior of this compound. The new high-pressure (HP) phase has been solved and refined from powder data, having an orthorhombic P2 12 12 1 structure. The pressure dependence of the structural parameters of both room- and…
Pressure-induced amorphization of the Y3Ga5O12 garnet studied to 1 Mbar
We use micro-beam synchrotron x-ray diffraction to study the pressure-induced amorphization of nano-sized and single crystals of Y3Ga5O12 up to pressures exceeding 1 Mbar in static compression. The abrupt pressure-induced amorphization found for both 56 nm and bulk micrometric crystals at around 76 GPa independently of the pressure transmitting medium employed demonstrates its intrinsic nature, previously predicted at 79 GPa by ab initio calculations. The single crystal structural solution at 50 GPa shows that the contraction of the unit-cell, mostly accommodated by the compressible YO8 dodecahedra, gives rise to a regularization and tilting increase of the GaO6 polyhedra with the Y?O-Ga an…
Stability and nature of the volume collapse of ε-Fe2O3 under extreme conditions
Iron oxides are among the major constituents of the deep Earth’s interior. Among them, the epsilon phase of Fe2O3 is one of the less studied polymorphs and there is a lack of information about its structural, electronic and magnetic transformations at extreme conditions. Here we report the precise determination of its equation of state and a deep analysis of the evolution of the polyhedral units under compression, thanks to the agreement between our experiments and ab-initio simulations. Our results indicate that this material, with remarkable magnetic properties, is stable at pressures up to 27 GPa. Above 27 GPa, a volume collapse has been observed and ascribed to a change of the local env…
Pressure-induced phase transformations in mineral chalcocite, Cu2S, under hydrostatic conditions
Abstract High-pressure room-temperature angle-dispersive powder X-ray diffraction measurements on Cu2S chalcocite were performed up to 30 GPa using a diamond-anvil cell, He as pressure transmitting medium and synchrotron radiation. Two first-order phase transitions were found at 3.2 and 7.4 GPa. The indexation of the powder diffraction patterns suggests three different monoclinic cells for the low-pressure chalcocite and the two high-pressure phases. Subtle changes in the X-ray diffraction patterns suggest a third pressure-induced transition above 26 GPa. Structural parameters and compressibility are discussed and compared to those reported in a previous study on Cu2S nanowires.
Phase stability and electronic structure of iridium metal at the megabar range
[EN] The 5d transition metals have attracted specific interest for high-pressure studies due to their extraordinary stability and intriguing electronic properties. In particular, iridium metal has been proposed to exhibit a recently discovered pressure-induced electronic transition, the so-called core-level crossing transition at the lowest pressure among all the 5d transition metals. Here, we report an experimental structural characterization of iridium by x-ray probes sensitive to both long- and short-range order in matter. Synchrotron-based powder x-ray diffraction results highlight a large stability range (up to 1.4 Mbar) of the low-pressure phase. The compressibility behaviour was char…