New Journal of Physics (Jan 2013)

Structure measurements of compressed liquid boron at megabar pressures

  • Sebastien Le Pape,
  • Alfredo A Correa,
  • Carsten Fortmann,
  • Paul Neumayer,
  • Tilo Döppner,
  • Paul Davis,
  • Tammy Ma,
  • Laurent Divol,
  • Kai-Uwe Plagemann,
  • E Schwegler,
  • Ronald Redmer,
  • Siegfried Glenzer

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/15/8/085011
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 15, no. 8
p. 085011

Abstract

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We report on the first measurements of the structure of compressed liquid boron, as it crosses the melt line in dynamic shock-compression experiments at a pressure of 100 GPa. Temporally, spectrally and angularly resolving x-ray scattering provides an independent and accurate measurement of the compression factor 1.5 and the electron density of 4 × 10 ^23 cm ^−3 at moderate temperatures of 0.2–1 eV. At these conditions, the elastic scattering measurements provide the structure factor and indicate the liquid compressed phase with a coordination number of 8.3 in good agreement with predictions from first-principles molecular dynamic simulations.