Pressure-induced structure change of molten KCl

Abstract

Energy-dispersive X-ray diffraction experiments of molten KCl under high pressure have been carried out by using synchrotron radiation. The diffraction profiles of molten KCl were acquired just above the melting temperature of KCl up to 4 GPa. The reduced structure factor S(Q)'s for molten KCl do not show any change in their primary features, except for a gradual increase in the first peak intensity with increasing pressure. This implies that molten KCl does not show a first-order phase transition, such as the B1-B2 transition, found in solid KCl, but that the local structure in molten KCl must be changed by compression. According to a molecular-dynamics simulation, this change of S(Q) can be explained by a continuous increase in the coordination number of the nearest-neighbor ions in molten KCl with pressure.