Nature Communications (Mar 2018)

Valence and spin states of iron are invisible in Earth’s lower mantle

  • Jiachao Liu,
  • Susannah M. Dorfman,
  • Feng Zhu,
  • Jie Li,
  • Yonggang Wang,
  • Dongzhou Zhang,
  • Yuming Xiao,
  • Wenli Bi,
  • E. Ercan Alp

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03671-5
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 1
pp. 1 – 9

Abstract

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Bridgmanite is the most abundant mineral in the lower mantle and therefore is crucial to interpreting geophysical observations and models. Here, the authors show that ferric-iron-only bridgmanite Fe3+ undergoes a spin transition at 43–53 GPa at 300 K and therefore has implications for mantle structure and dynamics.