Search for Planetary Relevant Salty Ice: Establishing the Structure of Expanded Salty NaCl Ice VII

The recent discovery of salt-filled ices has shown that ice can incorporate large amounts of salt into its crystalline structure under high pressure. From neutron diffraction data, it was shown that Li+ ions occupy interstitial void positions within the ice VII lattice, whilst the Cl- ions substitutionally take the place of the water molecules. This gives rise to remarkable changes in properties of the ice VII structure such as an expanded lattice volume, orientational disorder, high ionic conductivity and suppression of phase transition to proton ordered phases, which could have strong consequences on the modelling of the interiors of icy planets. However, the structure and phase diagram of the more astrophysically relevant NaCl-filled ice has not yet been explored. In this proposal, we aim to study the structure and phase diagram of NaCl-filled ice VII under the p-T conditions relevant for the interior of icy bodies in our Solar system.