Compression behavior of NiO in a diamond cell

Abstract

The compressibility of synthetic polycrystalline NiO was studied in a diamond anvil cell at room temperature utilizing two different X-ray sources. A standard film with a conventional X-ray source and the energy dispersive X-ray diffraction (EDXRD) method with synchrotron radiation were used for data acquisition. In the film method, the sample was compressed in a 4:1 methanol to ethanol solution up to 7 GPa with ruby fluorescence as a pressure calibrant. In the energy dispersive method, NiO powder was mixed with gold and compressed in two different conditions: gasketed and ungasketed up to 30 GPa. In the gasketed run, water was used as the pressure transmitting medium while gold was used as pressure calibrant in both runs.

Hydrostatic compression of NiO in both diffraction methods yields a bulk modulus (K _o) of 187 ± 7 GPa assuming K′ = 4. The compression of gasketed NiO of the synchrotron experiment, however, showed an obvious break at pressure exceeding 4 GPa due to the loss of hydrostaticity. NiO in a nonhydrostatic condition behaves with less compressibility than the hydrostatic results with a nominal K _o of 238 ± 10 GPa. The lower compressibility of NiO in synchrotron runs is attributed to the uniaxial loading effect which was more easily detected by the EDXRD geometry. The discrepancy in the bulk modulus can be attributed to the contrast in the shear strength between the sample and pressure medium and the Poisson effect of the sample under uniaxial loading.