High pressure thermoelasticity and sound velocities of Fe-Ni-Si alloys

Publication date: Available online 29 May 2019Source: Physics of the Earth and Planetary InteriorsAuthor(s): Rachel A. Morrison, Jennifer M. Jackson, Wolfgang Sturhahn, Jiyong Zhao, Thomas S. ToellnerAbstractThe Earth's iron-dominant core is known to contain nickel from cosmochemical analysis and some amount of light elements from geophysical constraints on density and seismic wave velocities. Although there have been several studies to constrain thermoelastic properties of iron-alloys, there has been no systematic study on the effects of nickel and light elements on properties of iron using the same experimental methods and data analysis approach. We conducted nuclear resonant inelastic X-ray scattering and X-ray diffraction experiments on body-centered cubic and hexagonal close-packed (hcp) Fe0.91Ni0.09 and Fe0.8Ni0.1Si0.1 up to 104 GPa and 86 GPa, respectively, and compare to similar measurements conducted on hcp-Fe up to 171 GPa. Specifically, we determine the Debye sound velocity from the low-energy transfer region of the (partial) phonon density of states (DOS) using the equation of state determined for each material and a new approach which utilizes information criteria and probability distributions. Nickel decreases the shear velocity of iron, while 10 at% Si has little to no effect on the shear velocity of Fe0.91Ni0.09. We observe that the shape of the phonon DOS of these alloys remains similar with increasing pressure. In the measured compression range, we the...

Source: Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors - May 30, 2019 Category: Physics Source Type: research