Response : High-Pressure Melting of (Mg,Fe)SiO 3 -Perovskite

High-pressure chemistry of nitride-based materials

Besides temperature at one atmosphere, the applied pressure is another important parameter for influencing and controlling reaction pathways and final reaction products. This is relevant not only for the genesis of natural minerals, but also for synthetic chemical products and technological materials. The present critical review (316 references) highlights recent developments that utilise high pressures and high-temperatures for the synthesis of new materials with unique properties, such as high hardness, or interesting magnetic or optoelectronic features. Novel metal nitrides, oxonitrides as well as the new class of nitride-diazenide compounds, all formed under high-pressure conditions, are highlighted. Pure oxides and carbides are not considered here. Moreover, syntheses under high-pressure conditions require special equipment and preparation techniques, completely different from those used for conventional synthetic approaches at ambient pressure. Therefore, we also summarize the high-pressure techniques used for the synthesis of new materials on a laboratory scale. In particular, our attention is focused on reactive gas pressure devices with pressures between 1.2 and 600 MPa, multi-anvil apparatus at P < 25 GPa and the diamond anvil cell, which allows work at pressures of 100 GPa and higher. For example, some of these techniques have been successfully upgraded to an industrial scale for the synthesis of diamond and cubic boron nitride.

(Mg,Fe)SiO3-perovskite stability under lower mantle conditions

In three different experiments up to 100 gigapascals and 3000 kelvin, (Mg,Fe)SiO3-perovskite, the major component of the lower mantle, remained stable and did not decompose to its component oxides (Mg, Fe)O and SiO2. Perovskite was formed from these oxides when heated in a diamond anvil cell at pressures up to 100 gigapascals. Both MgSiO3 crystals and glasses heated to 3000 kelvin at 75 gigapascals also formed perovskite as a single phase, as evident from Raman spectra. Moreover, fluorescence measurements on chromium-doped samples synthesized at these conditions gave no indication of the presence of MgO.

Perovskite Temperature Profile

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Implications for Mantle Dynamics from the High Melting Temperature of Perovskite

Recent studies have implied that (Mg, Fe)SiO(3)-perovskite, a likely dominant mineral phase in the lower mantle, may have a high melting temperature. The implications of these findings for the dynamics of the lower mantle were investigated with the use of numerical convection models. The results showed that low homologous temperatures (0.3 to 0.5) would prevail in the modeled lower mantle, regardless of the effective Rayleigh number and internal heating rates. High-temperature ductile creep is possible under relatively cold conditions. In models with low rates of internal heating, local maxima of viscosity developed in the mid-lower mantle that were similar to those obtained from inversion of geoid, topography, and plate velocities.