High pressure melting of lithium.

ABSTRACT

The melting curve of lithium between ambient pressure and 64 GPa is measured by detection of an abrupt change in its electrical resistivity at melting and by visual observation. Here we have used a quasi-four-point resistance measurement in a diamond anvil cell and measured the resistance of lithium as it goes through melting. The resistivity near melting exhibits a well documented sharp increase which allowed us to pinpoint the melting transition from ambient pressure to 64 GPa. Our data show that lithium melts clearly above 300 K in all pressure regions and its melting behavior adheres to the classical model. Moreover, we observed an abrupt increase in the slope of the melting curve around 10 GPa. The onset of this increase fits well to the linear extrapolation of the lower temperature bcc-fcc phase boundary.