Recovery of a high-pressure phase formed under laser-driven compression

The recovery of metastable structures formed at high pressure has been a long-standing goal in the field of condensed matter physics. While laser-driven compression has been used as a method to generate novel structures at high pressure, to date no high-pressure phases have been quenched to ambient...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Gorman, MG, McGonegle, D, Tracy, SJ, Clarke, SM, Bolme, CA, Gleason, AE, Ali, SJ, Hok, S, Greeff, CW, Heighway, PG, Hulpach, K, Glam, B, Galtier, E, Lee, HJ, Wark, JS, Eggert, JH, Wicks, JK, Smith, RF
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: American Physical Society 2020
Description
Summary:The recovery of metastable structures formed at high pressure has been a long-standing goal in the field of condensed matter physics. While laser-driven compression has been used as a method to generate novel structures at high pressure, to date no high-pressure phases have been quenched to ambient conditions. Here we demonstrate, using in situ x-ray diffraction and recovery methods, the successful quench of a high-pressure phase which was formed under laser-driven shock compression. We show that tailoring the pressure release path from a shock-compressed state to eliminate sample spall, and therefore excess heating, increases the recovery yield of the high-pressure ω phase of zirconium from 0% to 48%. Our results have important implications for the quenchability of novel phases of matter demonstrated to occur at extreme pressures using nanosecond laser-driven compression.