Abstract
In this paper we present a theoretical investigation of the structures and relative stability of the olivine and spinel phases of Mg2SiO4. We use both a purely ionic model, based on the Modified Electron Gas (MEG) model of intermolecular forces, and a bond polarization model, developed for low pressure silica phases, to investigate the role of covalency in these compounds. The standard MEG ionic model gives adequate structural results for the two phases but incorrectly predicts the spinel phase to be more stable at zero pressure. This is mainly because the ionic modeling of Mg2SiO4 only accounts for 95 percent of the lattice energy. The remainder can be attributed to covalency and many-body effects. An extension of the MEG ionic model using “many-body” pair potentials corrects the phase stability error, but predicts structures which are in poorer agreement with experiment than the standard ionic approach. In addition, calculations using these many-body pair potentials can only account for 10 percent of the missing lattice energy. This model predicts an olivine-spinel phase transition of 8 GPa, below the experimental value of 20 GPa. Therefore, in order to understand more fully the stability of these structures we must consider polarization. A two-shell bond polarization model enhances the stability of both structures, with the olivine structure being stabilized more. This model predicts a phase transition at about 80 GPa, well above the observed value. Also, the olivine and spinel structures calculated with this approach are in poorer agreement with experiment than the ionic model. Therefore, based on our investigations, to properly model covalency in Mg2SiO4, a treatment more sophisticated than the two-shell model is needed.
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Jackson, M.D., Gordon, R.G. A MEG study of the olivine and spinel forms of Mg2SiO4 . Phys Chem Minerals 15, 514–520 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00311022
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00311022