Structural investigation of silicate glasses at extreme conditions using soller slits and pink beam

Despite of more than 50 years of studying geologically relevant materials under high pressures and high temperatures major questions about the Earth’s interior are remaining. While the structures of the main constituting crystalline phases of the Earth’s crust and mantle have mostly been identified, the structures of geologically relevant melts and liquids at high pressures and temperatures are still not very well understood. We propose to utilize the extreme brightness of the upgraded ESRF in combination with Soller slits and diamond anvil cells to obtain the total scattering of silicate glasses in the MgO-FeO-SiO2 system, as analogue for silicate melts, at extreme conditions. We expect to significantly extend the Q-range of those difficult measurements using non-monochromatized beam at 60 keV, which will result in much better resolution in real space pair distribution function. Thus, lead finally being able to study more complex glasses than previously possible