The stability of Al,Fe-bearing phase H and a new pyrite-type hydroxide at high pressures

Abstract:

Water plays an important role in the structure, dynamics, and evolution of planets because hydrogen can affect the physical properties and stabilities of constituent minerals in the planets. Since alumimous phase H (MgSiO₄H₂-AlOOH) is stable over the entire pressure range of the lower mantle, the hydrated subducting plate may deliver a certain amount of water into the bottom of the Earth’s mantle (Tsuchiya 2013, Nishi et al. 2013, Ohira et al. 2014, Walter et al. 2015). Compositional analysis of phase H grains synthesized from natural serpentine shows the presence of the Fe component in this phase (Nishi et al., 2015). This result suggests that phase H would also form solid solutions with ε-FeOOH, since ε-FeOOH is isostructural to phase H and δ-AlOOH. Moreover, an ab initio calculation has recently predicted that the new high pressure form of AlOOH, which has pyrite-type structure, would be stabilized at pressures above 170 GPa (Tsuchiya and Tsuchiya, 2011). Although this pyrite-type hydroxide has been found in InOOH, this structure in AlOOH has not been reported by experimental studies.

Here we examine the composition and stability of Al,Fe-bearing phase H using a multi-anvil apparatus combined with sintered diamond anvils. Results show that large amounts of Fe and Al are partitioned into phase H relative to bridgmanite. Fe likely affects the stability of phase H in the lower mantle. Also, we conducted high pressure experiments on pure δ-AlOOH by using laser-heated diamond anvil cell (DAC) techniques up to 200 GPa and 2,500 K. In-situ X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements indicated that the transition from the δ-AlOOH to the pyrite-type structure occurs at high pressures above 190 GPa. Our experimental results exhibited a density reduction of 2.6 wt.% through the structural transition, and both experimental data plots and theoretical calculations showed similar compressibilities of δ-AlOOH and pyrite-type AlOOH. In recent years, hundreds of extra-solar planets have been reported. The stability of the pyrite-type hydroxide at extreme high pressures may affect the modelling results on the internal structure and deep water circulation of some extra-solar planets such as terrestrial super-Earths, which is because the hydroxide can store water in these regions.