Physics and Chemistry of Iron in the Earths Interior

Zuzana Kon pkov , Peter Lazor, Department of Earth Sciences, Villav gen 16, 752 36 Uppsala, Sweden o a a

Introduction
Iron in the deep interior of the Earth has properties, which are much different from those found at ambient conditions. For example, its melting point, chemical afnity, magnetism, and density are dramatically modied at high pressures and temperatures prevailing inside the Earths core where iron represents a dominating phase. Knowledge of these modied properties is required in order to understand the internal structure and evolution of the Earth as well as other planetary bodies in the Solar system. These facts have stimulated and driven high-pressure studies on iron around the world, including the geochemistry group at the program of Solid Earth Geology, where, in the past, research focused on melting, and structural and elastic properties of iron at high pressures and temperatures. In the current PhD project, the main focus is on thermal and elastic properties of iron at high pressures and temperatures and their implications for the thermal evolution of the Earth. High pressure high temperature experiments in conjunction with theory and numerical modeling provide powerful tool for determination physical properties od material such as, e.g. thermal conductivity.

Comsol Multiphysics
Finite element based method of Comsol Multiphysics numerial modeling package gives the opportunity to compute heat transfer in the laser-heated diamond anvill cell. It allows to vary geometries of the system (diamonds, gasket, sample, pressure medium), and materials by setting appropriate values of thermal conductivity, even temperature dependent. The rst step is to draw a geometry in real dimensions. Since the model has cylindrical symmetry around the axis that corresponds to the centerline of the laser beam we reduce the problem to 2D axisymmetric mode.

F IGURE 2: Diamond Anvil Cell with details of the diamonds and diamond culet

Pressures in laser-heated DAC are measured by the ruby uorescence method. Ruby has a strong uorescence spectrum with a large pressure shift, but unfortunately also a large shift with temperature. However, pressure can be accurately measured from unheated ruby chips anywhere in the pressure chamber. The ruby scale has been calibrated up to 180 GPa against primary shock-wave standards.

Conductive heat transport obeys the heat equation ((T ) T ) = Q where T is temperature, temperature dependent thermal conductivity and Q is heat source. In case of iron sample, laser power is absorbed in very thin surface layer proportional to skin depths of metal materials, which is usually of the order of nanometres. Thus, laser heating is modeled as heat ux on the heated side of the sample given by total laser power. Comsol then solves the heat equation with appropriate boundary conditions. The output is temperature distribution from which we can extract radial and axial temperature gradients across the sample as well as total normal heat ux.

High Temperature
In order to achieve temperature in excess of thousands of Kelvins in our samples we use Nd-doped Yttrium-Aluminum-Garnet laser with suitable wavelength for absorption (YAG, = 1.06m). Temperature of the sample is measured by spectral radiometry technique. The incandescent light from heated iron foil is collected in a spectral range between 500 and 800 nm and brought to spectrograph and CCD detector. F IGURE 1: Research on the Earths interior: links between experiment and theory

High Pressure
With decades of development, the diamond-anvill cell (DAC) has emerged as uniquely providing the capability of a wide range of in situ measurements over the entire P T range of the Earth. These conditions can be kept constant for long periods of time (hours), and this allows visual, spectroscopic, and X-ray diffraction measurements. The principal components of a diamond cell are two diamonds anvils compressing a gasket. A hole drilled in the center of the gasket serves as a pressure chamber. The pressure chamber is lled with material that thermally isolates the iron sample and prevents it from touching the diamonds. DAC preparation diamonds: type IIa, type I gasket: BeCu, Stainless Steel sample: 2 m and 5 m pure iron foils pressure medium: MgO and Al2O3 pressure chamber 150m F IGURE 3: Schematics of the laser heating system. DAC-diamond anvil cell, LS-light source, OBJ-objective, PC-computer, L-lens, M-mirrors F IGURE 4: Temperature distribution in the sample as a solution of Comsol Multiphysics