Structures and stability of new hydrate species of common aqueous systems for planetary science at high pressure and low temperatures.

Recent discoveries have demonstrated that the mineralogy of aqueous systems remains vastly unexplored at high pressures and low temperatures, even for common solutes such as NaCl or MgSO4. Investigation of the crystallographic diversity of these systems is motivated by the upcoming exploration of icy ocean worlds of the outer solar system by ambitious space missions such as NASA Europa Clipper and ESA JUICE. Deeper understanding of aqueous systems at low-temperature high-pressure can also provide fundamental thermodynamic knowledge applicable to cryobiology, organ and tissue preservation technologies [5]. Our group has identified several uncharacterized hydrate phases of common and relevant aqueous systems using a high throughput isochoric high pressure chamber. We intend to obtain in-situ single crystal X-Ray diffraction data on these new hydrate phases at high pressure and low temperatures in order to refine their structures and determine their stability range.