Abstract
At ambient conditions, witherite is the stable form of BaCO3 and has the aragonite structure with space group Pmcn. Above ~10 GPa, BaCO3 adopts a post-aragonite structure with space group Pmmn. High-pressure and high-temperature synchrotron X-ray diffraction experiments were used to study the stability and equation of state of post-aragonite BaCO3, which remained stable to the highest experimental P–T conditions of 150 GPa and 2,000 K. We obtained a bulk modulus K 0 = 88(2) GPa with \(K'\) = 4.8(3) and V 0 = 128.1(5) Å3 using a third-order Birch-Murnaghan fit to the 300 K experimental data. We also carried out density functional theory (DFT) calculations of enthalpy (H) of two structures of BaCO3 relative to the enthalpy of the post-aragonite phase. In agreement with previous studies and the current experiments, the calculations show aragonite to post-aragonite phase transitions at ~8 GPa. We also tested a potential high-pressure post–post-aragonite structure (space group C222 1 ) featuring four-fold coordination of oxygen around carbon. In agreement with previous DFT studies, ΔH between the C222 1 structure and post-aragonite (Pmmn) decreases with pressure, but the Pmmn structure remains energetically favorable to pressures greater than 200 GPa. We conclude that post–post-aragonite phase transformations of carbonates do not follow systematic trends observed for post-aragonite transitions governed solely by the ionic radii of their metal cations.
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Introduction
The high-pressure and high-temperature behavior of carbonate minerals are important for modeling the Earth’s global carbon cycle. Through subduction processes, carbonate-rich sediments are carried into the mantle, where partial melting returns a significant flux of CO2 to the atmosphere through surface volcanism (e.g. Marty and Tolstikhin 1998; Fischer 2008). High-pressure phase transformations of carbonates have been extensively studied because of their potential to host carbon in the Earth’s deep mantle (e.g. Boulard et al. 2011; Oganov et al. 2006; Isshiki et al. 2004; Ono et al. 2007; Merlini et al. 2012). Carbonate minerals are also considered potential host phases in CO2 sequestration technology (e.g. Boulard et al. 2011; Giammar et al. 2005; Goff and Lackner 1998; O’Connor et al. 2002). The larger ionic radius of Ba2+ compared with Pb2+, Sr2+, Ca2+, and Mg2+ has led to the expectation that BaCO3 should undergo similar phase transitions, but at lower pressures than PbCO3, SrCO3, CaCO3, or MgCO3 (Liu and Bassett 1986; Lin and Liu 1997b; Santillán and Williams 2004). To further investigate predicted high-pressure structures and trends among carbonates containing different metal cation radii, we have studied the high-pressure behavior of BaCO3 up to 150 GPa and 2,000 K, which was previously investigated experimentally to a maximum pressure of 75 GPa and temperature of 1,500 K (Ono 2007).
The calcite to aragonite transition of CaCO3 occurs at pressures above ~2 GPa at high temperature (Suito et al. 2001) but exhibits a number of metastable polymorphs in the 1–15 GPa range along the 300 K compression path, including calcite-II (Merrill and Bassett 1975) and the recently solved structures of calcite-III and calcite-IV (Merlini et al. 2012). The orthorhombic (Pmmn) post-aragonite structure of CaCO3 occurs at pressures above ~40 GPa and has been observed up to 140 GPa after heating to 1,700 K in experiments (Ono et al. 2007). The same study by Ono et al. (2007) showed that from 140 to 180 GPa, laser-heated CaCO3 samples transformed to the pyroxene-type (C2221) structure predicted by Oganov et al. (2006) from first principles.
PbCO3 exhibits metastable polymorphism during 300 K compression, with a transition from the aragonite structure to a PbCO3-II structure with space group P12 1 /c1 at around 8 GPa (Minch et al. 2010). The aragonite to post-aragonite transition was observed at 17 GPa and 35 GPa in PbCO3 and SrCO3, respectively (Lin and Liu 1997b).
Magnesite (MgCO3) is trigonal (R-3c) at room pressure and has been observed to transform to an orthorhombic phase at 115 GPa and 2,200 K, but the structure and space group have yet to be determined experimentally (Isshiki et al. 2004). Recent DFT calculations by Oganov et al. (2008) indicated several energetically similar structures above 84 GPa, including a C2/m structure (phase-II) containing three-membered rings of carbonate tetrahedral and a P2 1 (phase-III) form of MgCO3 above ~140 GPa. The absence of an orthorhombic post-aragonite structure in MgCO3 is perhaps explained by the relatively small ionic radius of Mg2+.
300 K compression of BaCO3 shows a displacive transition from the aragonite structure (Fig. 1a) to a metastable trigonal structure with space group P-31c (Holl et al. 2000; Ono 2007) but readily transforms to post-aragonite (Pmmn) (Fig. 1b) upon heating at 9–10 GPa (Ono 2007; this study). The post-aragonite form of BaCO3 is stable up to at least 75 GPa based upon experimental work by Ono et al. (2008). A study by Zaoui and Shahrour (2010) suggested that BaCO3 transforms to the C222 1 post–post-aragonite structure (Fig. 1c) above ~77 GPa using inter-atomic potential calculations. However, a recent DFT study by Arapan and Ahuja (2010) predicted that BaCO3 should remain in the post-aragonite (Pmmn) structure to at least 300 GPa. Here, we extend the pressure range over previous experiments to explore possible phase transformations in BaCO3 similar to the C222 1 phase observed for CaCO3 above ~140 GPa (Ono et al. 2007).
Here, we report the results of high-pressure high-temperature X-ray diffraction of BaCO3 up to 150 GPa and 2,000 K and calculate a 300 K equation of state. We also present the results of a first principles DFT investigation of several proposed high-pressure structures of BaCO3 over the same pressure range, which in agreement with our experiments and the results of Arapan and Ahuja (2010), demonstrates that the post-aragonite structure is favored over the proposed pyroxene-type C2221 structure to at least 150 GPa.
Experimental
Synchrotron X-ray diffraction
High-pressure X-ray diffraction experiments were performed at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), Sector 13 (GSECARS), beamline 13-ID-D. Platinum powder was incorporated into the witherite powder to act as a pressure standard and absorber for laser annealing. The sample was loaded into symmetric-type diamond anvil cell with beveled anvil culets of 100 μm inner diameter and 300 μm outer diameter. Neon was loaded as the pressure medium using the COMPRES/GSECARS gas-loading system at the APS (Rivers et al. 2008). Double-sided laser heating of the sample was accomplished using two 100 W, 1064 nm fiber lasers (IPG-Photonics YLR-series) with beam-shaping optics to produce a flat top laser heating area of approximately 15 × 15 μm (Prakapenka et al. 2008). Temperature was measured by the spectroradiometric method. X-ray diffraction patterns were collected using monochromatic X-rays of wavelength 0.3344 Å on a MAR-CCD detector. The focused X-ray beam area was about 5 × 5 μm at the sample. X-ray diffraction images were integrated to produce one-dimensional X-ray diffraction patterns using the Fit2d software (Hammersley et al. 1996). Pressures were calculated from the lattice parameters of platinum using the equation of state from Holmes et al. (1989). Diffracted peak positions were determined using the PeakFit software by Jandel Scientific. Lattice parameters of post-aragonite were refined using the program Unit Cell (Holland and Redfern 1997).
Density functional theory calculations
Density functional theory calculations were performed with the Vienna Ab-initio Simulation Package (VASP) using an energy cutoff of 500 eV. K-point meshes were generated using the Alloy Theoretic Advanced Toolkit (ATAT) (van de Walle et al. 2002) to produce 3,000 k-points per reciprocal atom in the Monkhorst–Pack scheme (Monkhorst and Pack 1976). Projector augmented wave potentials (Kresse 1999) were used in the Generalized Gradient Approximation (GGA) as parameterized by Perdew, Burke, and Ernzerhof (Perdew et al. 1996), with projection operators evaluated in real space. High-pressure calculations were done by incrementally increasing the pressure, using the previously relaxed structure as the input for the next pressure. All structures were fully relaxed using the conjugate gradient method. Gaussian smearing was used with a sigma value of 0.1 eV. Relative energies were converged to within 1 meV/atom with respect to energy cutoffs and k-points. All initial crystal structures were obtained from Oganov et al. (2006), Ono (2007), and the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database (ICSD).
Results and discussion
In the X-ray diffraction study, we recorded diffraction patterns before, during, and after heating (at 1,000–2,000 K) at pressures between approximately 1 and 150 GPa to explore possible phase transformations and to determine the equation of state of BaCO3. At 9.1 GPa, we observed witherite (Pmcn) transform to the post-aragonite structure (Pmmn) after heating to ~1,100 K for 15 s. Figure 2 shows a representative X-ray diffraction pattern of post-aragonite measured at 9.1 GPa with peaks labeled for BaCO3 post-aragonite, diamond, platinum, neon, and one unknown peak that did not belong to witherite, post-aragonite, diamond, platinum, or neon. The un-indexed peak disappeared upon increasing to the next pressure (16 GPa) and could have been due to a small amount of the metastable, trigonal P-31c structure observed on cold compression above 8 GPa by Holl et al. (2000). Fitted d-spacings at 9.1 GPa for the post-aragonite BaCO3 structure are presented in Table 1 and agree well with previous experiments (Ono 2007).
Between ~10 and ~150 GPa, the BaCO3 sample was heated for up to 20 min at up to 2,000 K, but no further phase changes were observed up to the maximum pressure of ~150 GPa. Specifically, we did not observe the C222 1 pyroxene-like structure predicted for BaCO3 at 77 GPa by Zaoui and Shahrour (2010). The current experimental results demonstrate that BaCO3 persists as post-aragonite (Pmmn) to at least 150 GPa, in agreement with predictions made by DFT (Arapan and Ahuja 2010).
Variation of the post-aragonite BaCO3 lattice parameters up to ~150 GPa is shown in Fig. 3 and listed in Table 2. The a-axis, which is oriented perpendicular to the plane of the carbonate groups, is the most compressible. Up to 75 GPa, a > c, but above 75 GPa, a < c. The crossover of a and c lattice parameters at ~75 GPa is in agreement with DFT predictions by Arapan and Ahuja (2010). There is larger uncertainty in the a-axis at pressures between 50 and 80 GPa due to overlapping of the BaCO3 post-aragonite (200) peak and the platinum (111) peak in the X-ray diffraction patterns, shown in Fig. 4. Overlap of the (110) and (011) peaks started to occur at approximately 50 GPa. Convergence of the (110) and (011) peaks was first reported by Ono (2007) and was originally thought to be evidence of a orthorhombic to tetragonal structure phase transition but was later shown not to be the case (Ono et al. 2008).
During the X-ray diffraction experiment, the sample was laser heated at up to 2,000 K for 10–20 min at every other pressure step to test for possible phase transitions and to anneal deviatoric stress in the sample chamber. Pressure–volume data measured after laser annealing were used to fit a 300 K third-order Birch-Murnaghan equation of state (Birch 1947; Angel 2001) (Eq.1):
where \(f_{E}\) is the Eulerian strain given by Eq. 2,
and \(K_{0}\) is the zero-pressure bulk modulus, and \(K' = \frac{dK}{dP}\).
Fitted equation of state parameters to the data listed in Table 2 for post-aragonite BaCO3 are V 0 = 128.1(5) Å3, K 0 = 88(2) GPa, and \(K'\) = 4.8(3). The zero-pressure bulk modulus and volume are in good agreement with Ono (2007), who obtained K 0 = 84(4) GPa and V 0 = 129.0(7) Å3 using a second-order fit with \(K'\) = 4 (fixed). The volume–pressure data from this study and Ono (2007) are plotted in Fig. 5, along with the fitted 3rd order Birch-Murnaghan equation of state (solid line) resulting from this study. Because the lowest pressure of post-aragonite BaCO3 is ~9 GPa, we tested our zero-pressure reference equation of state parameters by an alternative fitting method where we used 9 GPa as the reference pressure. Fitting all our data to a third-order equation of state with P ref = 9 GPa, we obtain V 9GPa = 117.8(5) Å3, K 9GPa = 128(7) GPa, and \(K'\) 9GPa = 4.6(2). Extrapolating this equation of state back to 0 GPa, we obtain zero-pressure parameters of V 0 = 128.3 Å3, K 0 = 85 GPa, and \(K^\prime\) = 5.1, in good agreement with the standard reference fitting. A comparison of equation of state parameters from this and other studies is summarized in Table 3.
Figure 6 shows calculated enthalpies of aragonite-structured BaCO3 (Pmcn) and the C222 1 structure (Oganov et al. 2006; Ono et al. 2007) relative to post-aragonite (Pmmn). Our calculations produce a witherite to post-aragonite transition pressure of 7.5 GPa, in good agreement with previous DFT studies (Ono et al. 2008; Arapan and Ahuja 2010) and the observed transition at ~9 GPa in our X-ray diffraction study. Unlike for CaCO3 (Oganov et al. 2006; Ono et al. 2007), our calculations indicate that the C222 1 structure is not favored over post-aragonite for BaCO3 over the entire experimental pressure range. This result does not agree with the inter-atomic potential calculations done by Zaoui and Shahrour (2010), which showed a post-aragonite to C222 1 transition at 76.7 GPa. The ‘over-compressed’ Pmcn-2 phase was not considered in this study because it was not stable within the experimental pressure range (Arapan and Ahuja 2010). The fact that no post-aragonite to post–post-aragonite phase transition was observed below ~150 GPa and 2,000 K is somewhat surprising given the phase transition trajectories of other carbonates such as CaCO3, for which the post-aragonite to post–post-aragonite transition has been experimentally observed (Ono et al. 2007).
Because CaCO3 is observed to undergo a post-aragonite to post–post-aragonite transition (i.e., the C222 1 pyroxene-type structure), the expected transition pressure for BaCO3 post-aragonite to post–post-aragonite was expected to occur at lower pressure, as predicted by Zaoui and Shahrour (2010). The absence of such a post–post-aragonite transition observed and calculated in this study calls into question the predicted crystal chemical systematics of carbonate transitions at ultra-high pressures.
In summary, we present X-ray diffraction experiments to 150 GPa and up to 2,000 K which show no further phase transformations following the transition from aragonite to post-aragonite at ~10 GPa. We show that the lattice parameters of the a and c axes meet at approximately 75 GPa. Crossover of the a and c lattice parameters coincides with the overlap of the (110) and (011) peaks, and separation of the two peaks was not observed upon further pressure increase. The post-aragonite (Pmmn) phase best describes all of the X-ray diffraction patterns up to ~150 GPa. DFT calculations further support that the post-aragonite phase is energetically favorable over the pyroxene-like C222 1 structure to at least 200 GPa.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the NSF EAR-074787 (CAREER), the Carnegie/DOE Alliance Center (CDAC), and by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to SDJ. Portions of this work were performed at GeoSoilEnviroCARS (GSECARS), Sector 13, Advanced Photon Source (APS), Argonne National Laboratory. GSECARS is supported by the NSF EAR-0622171 and Department of Energy DE-FG02-94ER14466. Use of the APS was supported by the DOE Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. This research was partially supported by COMPRES, the Consortium for Materials Properties Research in Earth Sciences under NSF Cooperative Agreement EAR 11-57758. SK was supported by the Center for Electrical Energy Storage: Tailored Interfaces, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science and Office of Basic Sciences. AI was supported by the Ford-Boeing-Northwestern (FBN) alliance, award no. 81132882. JWD was supported by the Revolutionary Materials for Solid State EnergyConversion, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciencesunder Award Number DE-SC00010543.
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Townsend, J.P., Chang, YY., Lou, X. et al. Stability and equation of state of post-aragonite BaCO3 . Phys Chem Minerals 40, 447–453 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00269-013-0582-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00269-013-0582-8