Expanding the Pressure Frontier in Grüneisen Parameter Measurement: Study of Sodium Chloride.

The Grüneisen parameter (γ) is crucial for determining many thermal properties, including the anharmonic effect, thermostatistics, and equation of state of materials. However, the isentropic adiabatic compression conditions required to measure the Grüneisen parameter under high pressure are difficult to achieve. Thus, direct experimental Grüneisen parameter data in a wide range of pressures is sparse. In this work, we developed a new device that can apply pressure (up to tens of GPa) with an extremely short time of about 0.5 ms, confidently achieving isentropic adiabatic compression. Then, we applied our new technique to sodium chloride and measured its Grüneisen parameter, which conforms to previous theoretical predictions. According to our obtained sodium chloride Grüneisen parameters, the calculated Hugoniot curve of the NaCl B1 phase appears up to 20 GPa and 960 K, which compares very well with the shock compression experimental data by Fritz et al. and other calculation works. Our results suggest that this new method can reliably measure the Grüneisen parameter of even more materials, which is significant for researching the equation of state in substances.

Pressure-induced phase transition in α- and ß-BiNbO4.

BiNbO4 has attracted a great deal of interest due to its excellent photocatalytic activities. Besides, it possesses rich polymorphism. Here, the structural stability and structural evolution of orthorhombic α- and triclinic ß-BiNbO4 were investigated via in situ X-ray diffraction patterns and Raman spectra up to 46.7 GPa. Upon compression, both BiNbO4 samples become unstable. α-BiNbO4 transformed into the monoclinic C2/c structure at 10.3 GPa, while ß-BiNbO4 possessed one P1̄-to-P1 isostructural phase transition around 12.7 GPa, and for the first time the crystal structure of each high pressure phase was identified. Both high pressure structures remained stable without obvious symmetry changes during compression to 46.7 GPa. In addition, both phase transitions were reversible upon decompression. These results provide insights to understand pressure-induced reversible phase transition in ABO4 compounds with polymorphism.