Tag: high pressure

Wet planets might evolve from dry, hydrogen-rich planets

Wet planets might evolve from dry, hydrogen-rich planets

Sub-Neptunes, or exoplanets 2–4 times Earth’s radius, are abundant in our galaxy. Models indicate that these exoplanets have rocky cores (the non-volatile interior) blanketed by envelopes of either hydrogen (dry gas dwarfs) or water (water worlds). 

In our own solar system, the water worlds of Uranus and Neptune orbit far from the sun, where temperatures are low enough for water to condense. This has led to the idea that water-rich planets form in the outer orbits of planetary systems, beyond what is known as the snow or ice line. They may then migrate inwards, to orbit closer to their star.

In recent years, however, large numbers of potentially water-rich exoplanets have been discovered in very close orbits. This is difficult to reconcile with the idea that such worlds can only form beyond the snow line.

The latest research by scientists from Arizona State University, The University of Chicago and the Open University of Israel suggests that water could be produced through chemical reactions at the boundary between a dry planet’s rocky core and hydrogen-rich atmosphere. This finding calls into question the idea that a planet’s composition is linked to where it formed. 

Researchers used the resources of the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory. Their results were published in the journal Nature.

To explore the potential high pressure and temperature interactions between the hydrogen in the envelope and silicate in the core of dry planets at the core-envelope boundary, the team used the unique capabilities of the University of Chicago’s GeoSoilEnviroCARS beamline at 13-ID-D of the APS. This beamline’s high pressure, high temperature diamond anvil cell setup is designed to probe materials in-situ at extreme conditions to answer geochemical and geophysical questions across the pressure and temperature range of Earth and other planets. 

Read more on the APS website

Image: The high pressure, high temperature diamond anvil cell experiments suggest that reactions between dense hydrogen fluid and molten silicates on dry planets could generate substantial amounts of water. This hints at a potential way for dry, hydrogen-rich planets to evolve into watery worlds, challenging conventional planetary formation theory.

Anna Pakhomova gets ERC grant to study possible life in icy moons

Anna Pakhomova gets ERC grant to study possible life in icy moons

Anna Pakhomova, scientist at the ESRF, has been awarded the ERC Consolidator Grant for her project OCEAN, which aims to study the effect of high pressure on organic chemistry in large ocean worlds. The grant also acknowledges the new capabilities of high-pressure ESRF beamlines like ID27, which went through the Extremely Brilliant Source upgrade.

The presence of water in its liquid state is thought to have driven Earth’s prebiotic chemistry and is considered an essential element for the emergence of life. This is why icy moons harboring subsurface oceans are the most promising objects for extraterrestrial habitability. 

There are several current and future space missions that will remotely probe intriguing Jupiter and Saturn’s icy moons. The ESA’s JUICE mission will arrive in 2031, the NASA’s Europa Clipper in 2030 and DragonFly will be launched in 2028.

“Until today, however, the question of the existence of life has always been looked at from the Earth’s perspective, while in fact, the pressure in the oceans of the Earth and those in icy moons is very different”, explains Pakhomova. “We know of some volatile organics in those large oceans that could be biological precursors, but we do not have information on their chemical evolution at the right pressure-temperature-composition conditions in water”, she adds. “This is what we want to find out with OCEAN”, she adds.

Read more on the ESRF website

Image: Anna Pakhomova on beamline ID27

Credit: S. Candé

Structure of liquid carbon measured for the first time

Structure of liquid carbon measured for the first time

With the declared aim of measuring matter under extreme pressure, an international research collaboration headed by the University of Rostock and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) used the high-performance laser DIPOLE 100-X at European XFEL for the first time in 2023. With spectacular results: In this initial experiment they managed to study liquid carbon – an unprecedented achievement, as the researchers report in the journal Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09035-6). 

Liquid carbon can be found, for example, in the interior of planets and plays an important role in future technologies like nuclear fusion. To date, however, only very little was known about carbon in its liquid form because in this state it was practically impossible to study in the lab: Under normal pressure carbon does not melt but immediately changes into a gaseous state. Only under extreme pressure and at temperatures of approximately 4,500 degrees Celsius – the highest melting point of any material – does carbon become liquid. No container would withstand that.

Laser compression, on the other hand, can turn solid carbon into liquid for fractions of a second. And the challenge was to use these fractions of a second to take measurements. In a previously unimaginable way, this has now become reality at the European XFEL, the world’s largest X-ray laser with its ultrashort pulses, in Schenefeld, near Hamburg.

Unique measuring technology in this combination

The unique combination of the European XFEL with the high-performance laser DIPOLE100-X was crucial for the success of the experiment. It was developed by the British Science and Technology Facilities Council and made available to scientists from all over the world by the HIBEF User Consortium (Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields). A community of leading international research institutions at the HED-HIBEF (High Energy Density) experimental station at European XFEL has now combined powerful laser compression with ultrafast X-ray analysis and large-area X-ray detectors for the first time.

In the experiment, the high-energy pulses of the DIPOLE100-X laser drive compression waves through a solid carbon sample and liquefy the material for nanoseconds, that is, for a billionth of a second. During this nanosecond, the sample is irradiated with the ultrashort X-ray laser flash of the European XFEL. The carbon atoms scatter the X-ray light – similar to the way light is diffracted by a grating. The diffraction pattern allows inferences to be drawn about the current arrangement of the atoms in the liquid carbon.

The whole experiment only lasts a few seconds but is repeated many times: every time with a slightly delayed X-ray pulse or under slightly different pressure and temperature conditions. Many snapshots combine to make a movie. Researchers have thus been able to trace the transition from solid to liquid phase one step at a time.

Read more on European XFEL website

Image: Groundbreaking experiment at European XFEL: Research team measured structure of liquid carbon for the first time

Credit: Martin Kuensting / HZDR

Asteroid impact in slow motion

Asteroid impact in slow motion

High-pressure study solves 60-year-old mystery

For the first time, researchers have recorded live and in atomic detail what happens to the material in an asteroid impact. The team of Falko Langenhorst from the University of Jena and Hanns-Peter Liermann from DESY simulated an asteroid impact with the mineral quartz in the lab and pursued it in slow motion in a diamond anvil cell, while monitoring it with DESY’s X-ray source PETRA III. The observation reveals an intermediate state in quartz that solves a decades-old mystery about the formation of characteristic lamellae in quartz hit by an asteroid. Quartz is ubiquitous on the Earth’s surface, and is, for example, the major constituent of sand. The analysis helps to better understand traces of past impacts, and may also have significance for entirely different materials. The researchers present their findings in the journal Nature Communications.

Large asteroid impacts can melt significant amounts of material from Earth’s crust (artist’s impression). Credit: NASA, Don Davis

Asteroid impacts are catastrophic events that create huge craters and sometimes melt parts of Earth’s bedrock.“ Nevertheless, craters are often difficult to detect on Earth, because erosion, weathering and plate tectonics cause them to disappear over millions of years,” Langenhorst explains. Therefore, minerals that undergo characteristic changes due to the force of the impact often serve as evidence of an impact. For example, quartz sand (which chemically is silicon dioxide, SiO2) is gradually transformed into glass by such an impact, with the quartz grains then being crisscrossed by microscopic lamellae. This structure can only be explored in detail under an electron microscope. It can be seen in material from the relatively recent and prominent Barringer crater in Arizona, USA, for example.

Read more on the DESY website

Image: Large asteroid impacts can melt significant amounts of material from Earth’s crust (artist’s impression)

Credit: NASA, Don Davis

High pressure synthesis in gallium sulphide chalcogenide

High pressure synthesis in gallium sulphide chalcogenide

Researchers from Universitat Politècnica de València, Universidad de La Laguna, Universidad de Cantabria and the ALBA Synchrotron have published a new work on high pressure chemistry in gallium (III) sulphide chalcogenide. In this work, relevant fingerprints (vibrational and structural) of a pressure-induced paralectric to ferroelectric phase transition are shown. This is the first time when a tetradymite-like (R3m) phase has been synthesized and observed experimentally in gallium-based sequichalcogenides. High pressure X-ray diffraction measurements were carried out at MSPD beamline of ALBA.

Gallium (III) sulphide (Ga2S3) is a compound of sulphur and gallium, that is a semiconductor that has a wide variety of applications in electronics and photonics: nano optoelectronics, photonic chips, electro-catalysis, energy conversion and storage, solar energy devices, gas sensors, laser-radiation detection, second harmonic generation, phase change memories or photocatalytic water splitting systems.

In this work published in Chemistry of Materials,scientists have shown relevant vibrational and structural fingerprints of a pressure-induced paraelectric to ferroelectric R-3m-to-R3m (β’-to-φ) phase transition under decompression on Ga2S3 chalcogenide.

This transition was theoretically predicted in several III−VI B2X3 compounds at high temperature (where B can be aluminium, gallium or indium and X, sulphur, selenium or tellurium). The novelty of this research stems from the synthesis of both phases: β-(R-3m) and α-In2Se3 (R3m)-like structures on Ga2S3 and tuning them via decreasing pressure. Within the III−VI B2X3 compounds, this R-3m-to-R3m (β’-to-φ-Ga2S3) phase transition had been observed experimentally only in the indium (III) selenide (In2Se3)compound, under varying temperature or pressure, to date.

This finding leads the way for designing cheap, nontoxic, nonrare-earth, and abundant element-based devices for second harmonic generation, photocatalytic splitting, ferroelectric, pyroelectric, and piezoelectric applications based on Ga2S3.

Read more on the ALBA website

Image: Samuel Gallego and Catalin Popescu at the MSPD beamline of ALBA.

Scientists synthesise new materials at terapascal pressures for the first time

Scientists synthesise new materials at terapascal pressures for the first time

A team led by the University of Bayreuth (Germany) has synthesized, for the first time, new materials at terapascal pressures, using the ESRF’s ID11 and a unique diamond anvil cell. The results are published in the journal Nature.

Matter changes with variations of pressure and temperature, which allows the tuning of many material properties. These possibilities can shed light onto scientific questions, such as the fundamental understanding of the Universe or lead to targeted design of advanced materials. For example, today super-abrasive cubic Boron Nitride is used for grinding high-quality tool steels and artificial diamonds created using high temperature and high pressure are more prevalent than natural ones.

A team of scientists led by the University of Bayreuth has synthesized new materials at terapascal pressures using laser heating for the first time. The team used rhenium-nitrogen compounds as models to show that studies at pressures three times higher than pressure in the center of the Earth are now possible. Natalia Dubrovinskaya, professor at the University of Bayreuth and one of the corresponding authors of the paper, explains the relevance of these compounds:  “These novel rhenium-nitrogen compounds showed that at ultra-high pressures we can make materials that cannot be made at lower pressures/temperatures, and uncover fundamental rules of physics and chemistry. We found, for example, that due to a huge compression, rhenium behaves chemically in a similar way to iron”.

Read more on the ESRF website

Image: Schematic illustration of the Diamond Anvil Cell assembly

Credit: Timofey Fedotenko

High-pressure experiments provide insight into icy planets

High-pressure experiments provide insight into icy planets

Research team determines compression behaviour of water ice in unprecedented detail

An international team of scientists has been using X-rays to take a look inside distant ice planets. At the PETRA III Extreme Conditions Beamline, they investigated how water ice behaves at high pressure, under conditions corresponding to those inside the planet Neptune, for example. At pressures up to almost two million times atmospheric pressure at sea level on Earth, the researchers were able to observe in unparalleled detail how water ice behaves under compression. The team, led by Hauke Marquardt from the University of Oxford, is presenting its findings in the scientific journal Physical Review B.

Planetary ices – such as water ice (H2O), methane ice (CH4) and ammonia ice (NH3) – make up large parts of the ice giants in our solar system and are very likely to occur inside many exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system. “However, the physical properties and phase diagrams of these compounds are not sufficiently known at the pressures and temperatures that prevail inside planets,” explains Marquardt. “Previous experimental studies using X-ray diffraction in a static diamond anvil cell have contributed a great deal to our understanding of ices at high pressure, but they have been unable to adequately answer numerous questions.”

Read more on the DESY website

Image : Ice at room temperature: A mixture of water ice and liquid water in a high-pressure cell at a temperature around 25 degrees Celsius and a pressure of one gigapascal, which corresponds to 10 000 times atmospheric pressure

Credit: DESY, Hanns-Peter Liermann

Minerals let Earth’s oceans seep down deeper than expected

Minerals let Earth’s oceans seep down deeper than expected

Amphiboles could carry the volume of the Arctic Ocean into Earth’s mantle in 200 million years

A bigger volume of the world’s oceans is seeping deeper into Earth’s mantle than expected: That is the result of a study investigating a water-bearing mineral abundant in the oceanic crust. High-pressure experiments at DESY’s X-ray source PETRA III show that the mineral glaucophane is surprisingly stable up to 240 kilometres underground, which means it also carries water down to this depth. Scientists attribute this to the gradual cooling of Earth’s interior over geological timescales. The cooler temperatures let glaucophane and possibly other water-bearing minerals survive to greater pressures, as the team headed by Yongjae Lee from Yonsei University in South Korea reports in the journal Nature Communications. The scientists estimate that in about 200 million years, an additional volume equal to the Arctic Ocean could seep deep into Earth’s mantle this way.

Read more on the DESY website

Image: In the high-pressure cell, glaucophane samples are heated and squeezed between two diamond anvils

Credit: Yonsei University, Yoonah Bang/Huijeong Hwang

High-pressure study advances understanding of promising battery materials

High-pressure study advances understanding of promising battery materials

X-ray investigation shows systematic distortion of the crystal lattice of high-entropy oxides

In a high-pressure X-ray study, scientists have gained new insights into the characteristics of a promising new class of materials for batteries and other applications. The team led by Qiaoshi Zeng from the Center for High Pressure Science in China used the brilliant X-rays from DESY’s research light source PETRA III to analyse a so-called high-entropy oxide (HEO) under increasing pressure. The study, published in the journal Materials Today Advances is a first, but very important step paving a way for a broader picture and solid understanding of HEO materials.

Modern society requires industry to manufacture efficiently sustainable products for everyday life, for example batteries for smart phones. About five years ago, a new class of materials emerged that appears to be very promising for the design of new applications, especially batteries. These high-entropy oxides consist of at least five metals that are distributed randomly in a common simple crystal lattice, while their crystal structure can be different from each metal’s generic lattice. A popular example of a HEO material consists of 20 per cent each of cobalt, copper, magnesium, nickel and zinc for every oxygen atom, or (Co0.2Cu0.2Mg0.2Ni0.2Zn0.2)O.

Read more on the DESY website

Image: Example of a high-entropy oxide between the anvils of a diamond anvil cell used to exert increasing pressure on the sample. Credit: Center of High Pressure Science, Qiaoshi Zeng