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Minerals
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Structural Characterization of Earth Materials at Extreme Conditions
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Structural Characterization of Earth Materials at Extreme Conditions

A special issue of Minerals (ISSN 2075-163X). This special issue belongs to the section "Crystallography and Physical Chemistry of Minerals & Nanominerals".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2021) | Viewed by 17073

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Martin Kunz

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Interests: Non-ambient condition X-ray crystallography, Mineral Physics, Synchrotron X-ray science

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The crystal structure of a mineral constitutes, together with its chemical composition, the most fundamental characteristics of any mineral. Because of this, over the past 50-plus years countless studies have been devoted to elucidate the crystal structures of minerals, and in fact the acceptance of a new mineral species by the IMA requires information on the crystal structure. The advent of modern synchrotron and neutron radiation sources with their higher brightness opened new opportunities to push structural exploration towards more extreme conditions, both thanks to the ability to probe smaller volumes and also the ability to penetrate more complex sample environments.  These new opportunities are accompanied by new challenges, such as reduced mobility or reduced powder statistics, that need to be addressed with approaches different from traditional diffraction techniques.

The goal of this Special Issue is to collect contributions form a spectrum of structural studies on Earth Materials involving any kind of extreme environment (temperature, pressure, stress field, rare inaccessible specimen, etc) with any kind of structural probe (X-rays, neutrons, electron microscope etc). Multimodal studies or contributions based on novel approaches are especially welcome.

Dr. Martin Kunz
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Minerals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • non-ambient condition crystallography
  • deep Earth mineralogy
  • meteorite mineralogy
  • mineral physics

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

11 pages, 2412 KiB  
Article
Ultrafast X-ray Diffraction Study of a Shock-Compressed Iron Meteorite above 100 GPa
by Sabrina Tecklenburg, Roberto Colina-Ruiz, Sovanndara Hok, Cynthia Bolme, Eric Galtier, Eduardo Granados, Akel Hashim, Hae Ja Lee, Sébastien Merkel, Benjamin Morrow, Bob Nagler, Kyle Ramos, Dylan Rittman, Richard Walroth, Wendy L. Mao and Arianna E. Gleason
Minerals 2021, 11(6), 567; https://doi.org/10.3390/min11060567 - 26 May 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3647
Abstract
Natural kamacite samples (Fe92.5Ni7.5) from a fragment of the Gibeon meteorite were studied as a proxy material for terrestrial cores to examine phase transition kinetics under shock compression for a range of different pressures up to 140 GPa. In [...] Read more.
Natural kamacite samples (Fe92.5Ni7.5) from a fragment of the Gibeon meteorite were studied as a proxy material for terrestrial cores to examine phase transition kinetics under shock compression for a range of different pressures up to 140 GPa. In situ time-resolved X-ray diffraction (XRD) data were collected of a body-centered cubic (bcc) kamacite section that transforms to the high-pressure hexagonal close-packed (hcp) phase with sub-nanosecond temporal resolution. The coarse-grained crystal of kamacite rapidly transformed to highly oriented crystallites of the hcp phase at maximum compression. The hcp phase persisted for as long as 9.5 ns following shock release. Comparing the c/a ratio with previous static and dynamic work on Fe and Fe-rich Fe-Ni alloys, it was found that some shots exhibit a larger than ideal c/a ratio, up to nearly 1.65. This work represents the first time-resolved laser shock compression structural study of a natural iron meteorite, relevant for understanding the dynamic material properties of metallic planetary bodies during impact events and Earth’s core elasticity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Characterization of Earth Materials at Extreme Conditions)
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12 pages, 859 KiB  
Article
Equation of State for Natural Almandine, Spessartine, Pyrope Garnet: Implications for Quartz-In-Garnet Elastic Geobarometry
by Suzanne R. Mulligan, Elissaios Stavrou, Stella Chariton, Oliver Tschauner, Ashkan Salamat, Michael L. Wells, Alexander G. Smith, Thomas D. Hoisch and Vitali Prakapenka
Minerals 2021, 11(5), 458; https://doi.org/10.3390/min11050458 - 27 Apr 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 4163
Abstract
The equation of state (EoS) of a natural almandine74spessartine13pyrope10grossular3 garnet of a typical composition found in metamorphic rocks in Earth’s crust was obtained using single crystal synchrotron X-ray diffraction under isothermal room temperature compression. A third-order [...] Read more.
The equation of state (EoS) of a natural almandine74spessartine13pyrope10grossular3 garnet of a typical composition found in metamorphic rocks in Earth’s crust was obtained using single crystal synchrotron X-ray diffraction under isothermal room temperature compression. A third-order Birch-Murnaghan EoS was fitted to P-V data and the results are compared with published EoS for iron, manganese, magnesium, and calcium garnet compositional end-members. This comparison reveals that ideal solid solution mixing can reproduce the EoS for this intermediate composition of garnet. Additionally, this new EoS was used to calculate geobarometry on a garnet sample from the same rock, which was collected from the Albion Mountains of southern Idaho. Quartz-in-garnet elastic geobarometry was used to calculate pressures of quartz inclusion entrapment using alternative methods of garnet mixing and both the hydrostatic and Grüneisen tensor approaches. QuiG barometry pressures overlap within uncertainty when calculated using EoS for pure end-member almandine, the weighted averages of end-member EoS, and the EoS presented in this study. Grüneisen tensors produce apparent higher pressures relative to the hydrostatic method, but with large uncertainties. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Characterization of Earth Materials at Extreme Conditions)
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19 pages, 3945 KiB  
Article
Using Multigrain Crystallography to Explore the Microstructural Evolution of the α-Olivine to γ-Ringwoodite Transformation and ε-Mg2SiO4 at High Pressure and Temperature
by Brian Chandler, Michelle Devoe, Martin Kunz and Hans-Rudolf Wenk
Minerals 2021, 11(4), 424; https://doi.org/10.3390/min11040424 - 16 Apr 2021
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3329
Abstract
The introduction of multigrain crystallography (MGC) applied in a laser-heated diamond anvil cell (LH-DAC) using synchrotron X-rays has provided a new path to investigate the microstructural evolution of materials at extreme conditions, allowing for simultaneous investigations of phase identification, strain state determination, and [...] Read more.
The introduction of multigrain crystallography (MGC) applied in a laser-heated diamond anvil cell (LH-DAC) using synchrotron X-rays has provided a new path to investigate the microstructural evolution of materials at extreme conditions, allowing for simultaneous investigations of phase identification, strain state determination, and orientation relations across phase transitions in a single experiment. Here, we applied this method to a sample of San Carlos olivine beginning at ambient conditions and through the α-olivine → γ-ringwoodite phase transition. At ambient temperatures, by measuring the evolution of individual Bragg reflections, olivine shows profuse angular streaking consistent with the onset of yielding at a measured stress of ~1.5 GPa, considerably lower than previously reported, which may have implications for mantle evolution. Furthermore, γ-ringwoodite phase was found to nucleate as micron to sub-micron grains imbedded with small amounts of a secondary phase at 15 GPa and 1000 °C. Using MGC, we were able to extract and refine individual crystallites of the secondary unknown phase where it was found to have a structure consistent with the ε-phase previously described in chondritic meteorites. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Characterization of Earth Materials at Extreme Conditions)
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20 pages, 10093 KiB  
Article
Cation Disorder Caused by Olivine-Ringwoodite Phase Transition Mechanism, Possible Explanation for Blue Olivine Inclusion in a Diamond
by William A. Bassett and Elise A. Skalwold
Minerals 2021, 11(2), 202; https://doi.org/10.3390/min11020202 - 15 Feb 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 5146
Abstract
Synchrotron X-ray diffraction, as well as visual observations, in a diamond anvil cell (DAC) using soft metal gaskets or slightly reducing gas environment, have revealed that the olivine-ringwoodite transition in olivines of several compositions take place in two steps: step 1: displacive restacking [...] Read more.
Synchrotron X-ray diffraction, as well as visual observations, in a diamond anvil cell (DAC) using soft metal gaskets or slightly reducing gas environment, have revealed that the olivine-ringwoodite transition in olivines of several compositions take place in two steps: step 1: displacive restacking of the oxygen layers, followed by step 2: diffusive reordering of the cations. The initiation of the phase transition was observed at temperatures as low as 200 °C below the reported temperature for the phase transition under hydrostatic conditions. These observations, especially residual disordered cations, have important implications for deep-focus earthquakes, the ability of ringwoodite to host surprising amounts of water, and possibly the observation of a blue olivine inclusion in a natural diamond from Brazil and in a pallasitic meteorite from Russia. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Characterization of Earth Materials at Extreme Conditions)
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