Amorphous-amorphous phase transitions in multicomponent minerals at high pressures


It was carried out the experimental and theoretical research of dynamic and static mechanisms of the amorphization in order to receive
the general physical picture of microscopic processes underlying of the amorphization in a number of the frame minerals at applying of external pressure. It were determined the conditions of appearance of two different on topology of amorphous phases in process amorphization the same mineral. It was found that if the rate of compression is properly chosen to make the dynamics of zeolite amorphization much faster than that of a conventional glass of the same composition, i.e., τ amorph < τ glass, then a LDA (low-density amorphous) glass will be obtained, which may have physical properties different from any obtainable by the usual routes, even by the slowest cooling from the melt. The calculation of the lattice dynamics shows the following picture of amorphization pressure: the random displacements in the amorphous phase are associated with the incipient instability of at least one nearly flat phonon branch. These random displacements are large enough to eliminate the diffraction picture through the reduction of the Debye-Waller factor, but not so large as to destroy the crystal structure topology. The LDA structure is rearranged at further increase in pressure to a denser disordered HDA (high-density amorphous) phase. The HDA phase is a usual "thermal" glass whose atomic structure is not topologically equivalent to any crystalline structure. The phase transition between LDA and HDA zeolites was detected using a high pressure Raman spectroscopy. It is found that this transition is apparently of the first order and occurs with a silicon coordination rise, i.e., with change of topology. It is considered, that amorphization caused of the pressure will be reversible if crystal topology is kept in an amorphous phase. This picture, being physically probable, should be still confirmed. In this connection it was investigated the reversibility of the mineral amorphization at compression in penetrating and not penetrating environments, in particular, at compression in pure water. Incorporation of water into synthetic olivine in the forsterite-water-graphite system at high pressures and temperatures has been investigated by micro-IR spectroscopy and micro-Raman spectroscopy. Then it was carried out the experimental research of the synthetic zeolite NaA in pure water at high pressures by synchrotron X-ray powder method. It was carried out the analysis of structure by Rietveld refinement in order to receive the information on filling of the water sites in α - and β - cage in synthetic zeolite NaA. Subsequently the reverse Monte Carlo and the Rietveld modelling methods will be incorporated for the local structural configurations modelling in HDA and LDA phases.