@phdthesis{Biedermann2020, author = {Biedermann, Nicole}, title = {Carbonate-silicate reactions at conditions of the Earth's mantle and the role of carbonates as possible trace-element carriers}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-48277}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-482772}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xvii, 127}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Carbonates play a key role in the chemistry and dynamics of our planet. They are directly connected to the CO2 budget of our atmosphere and have a great impact on the deep carbon cycle. Moreover, recent studies have shown that carbonates are stable along the geothermal gradient down to Earth's lower mantle conditions, changing their crystal structure and related properties. Subducted carbonates may also react with silicates to form new phases. These reactions will redistribute elements, such as calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), iron (Fe) and carbon in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2), but also trace elements, that are carried by the carbonates. The trace elements of most interest are strontium (Sr) and rare earth elements (REE) which have been found to be important constituents in the composition of the primitive lower mantle and in mineral inclusions found in super-deep diamonds. However, the stability of carbonates in presence of mantle silicates at relevant temperatures is far from being well understood. Related to this, very little is known about distribution processes of trace elements between carbonates and mantle silicates. To shed light on these processes, we studied reactions between Sr- and REE-containing CaCO3 and Mg/Fe-bearing silicates of the system (Mg,Fe)2SiO4 - (Mg,Fe)SiO3 at high pressure and high temperature using synchrotron radiation based μ-X-ray diffraction (μ-XRD) and μ-X-ray fluorescence (μ-XRF) with μm-resolution in a laser-heated diamond anvil cell. X-ray diffraction is used to derive the structural changes of the phase reactions whereas X-ray fluorescence gives information on the chemical changes in the sample. In-situ experiments at high pressure and high temperature were performed at beamline P02.2 at PETRA III (Hamburg, Germany) and at beamline ID27 at ESRF (Grenoble, France). In addition to μ-XRD and μ-XRF, ex-situ measurements were made on the recovered sample material using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and provided further insights into the reaction kinetics of carbonate-silicate reactions. Our investigations show that CaCO3 is unstable in presence of mantle silicates above 1700 K and a reaction takes place in which magnesite plus CaSiO3-perovskite are formed. In addition, we observed that a high content of iron in the carbonate-silicate system favours dolomite formation during the reaction. The subduction of natural carbonates with significant amounts of Sr leads to a comprehensive investigation of the stability not only of CaCO3 phases in contact with mantle silicates but also of SrCO3 (and of Sr-bearing CaCO3). We found that SrCO3 reacts with (Mg,Fe)SiO3-perovskite to form magnesite and gained evidence for the formation of SrSiO3-perovskite. To complement our study on the stability of SrCO3 at conditions of the Earth's lower mantle, we performed powder X-ray diffraction and single crystal X-ray diffraction experiments at ambient temperature and up to 49 GPa. We observed a transformation from SrCO3-I into a new high-pressure phase SrCO3-II at around 26 GPa with Pmmn crystal structure and a bulk modulus of 103(10) GPa. This information is essential to fully understand the phase behaviour and stability of carbonates in the Earth's lower mantle and to elucidate the possibility of introducing Sr into mantle silicates by carbonate-silicate reactions. Simultaneous recording of μ-XRD and μ-XRF in the μm-range over the heated areas provides spatial information not only about phase reactions but also on the elemental redistribution during the reactions. A comparison of the spatial intensity distribution of the XRF signal before and after heating indicates a change in the elemental distribution of Sr and an increase in Sr-concentration was found around the newly formed SrSiO3-perovskite. With the help of additional TEM analyses on the quenched sample material the elemental redistribution was studied at a sub-micrometer scale. Contrary to expectations from combined μ-XRD and μ-XRF measurements, we found that La and Eu were not incorporated into the silicate phases, instead they tend to form either isolated oxide phases (e.g. Eu2O3, La2O3) or hydroxyl-bastn{\"a}site (La(CO3)(OH)). In addition, we observed the transformation from (Mg,Fe)SiO3-perovskite to low-pressure clinoenstatite during pressure release. The monoclinic structure (P21/c) of this phase allows the incorporation of Ca as shown by additional EDX analyses and, to a minor extent, Sr too. Based on our experiments, we can conclude that a detection of the trace elements in-situ at high pressure and high temperature remains challenging. However, our first findings imply that silicates may incorporate the trace elements provided by the carbonates and indicate that carbonates may have a major effect on the trace element contents of mantle phases.}, language = {en} } @article{KrstulovićRosaBiedermannetal.2021, author = {Krstulović, Marija and Rosa, Angelika D. and Biedermann, Nicole and Irifune, Tetsuo and Wilke, Max}, title = {Structural changes in aluminosilicate glasses up to 164 GPa and the role of alkali, alkaline earth cations and alumina in the densification mechanism}, series = {Chemical geology : official journal of the European Association for Geochemistry}, volume = {560}, journal = {Chemical geology : official journal of the European Association for Geochemistry}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0009-2541}, doi = {10.1016/j.chemgeo.2020.119980}, pages = {14}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Pressure induced structural changes in silicate melts have a great impact on their physico-chemical properties and hence on their behaviour in the deep Earth's interior. In order to gain a deeper understanding we have studied the densification mechanism in multicomponent aluminosilicate glasses (albitic and albit-diopside composition) by means of extended X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy coupled to a diamond anvil cell up to 164 GPa. We have monitored the structural modifications from the network-former Ge as well as the network-modifier Sr. Notably, we tracked the evolution of Ge-O and Sr-O bond lengths (RGe-O, RSr-O) and their coordination number with pressure. We show that RGe-O increases strongly up to about 32 GPa, whereas RSr-O increases only slightly up to similar to 26 GPa. We assign these extensions to the increase of the coordination number from 4 to 6 (Ge) and from similar to 6 to at least 9 (Sr). Upon further compression RGe-O and RSr-O exhibit a continuous decrease to the highest probed pressure. These bond contractions, notably of RGe-O, that are continuous and exceed the one observed in pure SiO2 and GeO2, reflect a higher structural flexibility of multi-component glasses compared to those simple systems. Particularly, the high fraction of non-bridging oxygen atoms due to the presence of Na, Sr, Ca, Mg in the studied glasses, favours the simple compression of the highly-coordinated polyhedra of Si and Ge at pressure greater than 30 GPa. This is in strong contrast to pure oxides where cation polyhedral distortions govern the densification mechanism of the glass. The results of this study demonstrate that low field-strength alkali and alkaline earth cations, ubiquitous in deep Earth's melts, have a profound influence on the densification mechanism of glasses. Our results provide important constrains for interpreting the observed low velocity anomalies at the Earth's core-mantle boundary that have been, beyond others, referred to the presence of high-density melts. The hypothesis that non-buoyant melts at the Earth's core-mantle boundary can be formed by peculiar structural transformations in melts leading to higher coordination numbers compared to their crystalline equivalents is not supported from the present observations. The present results rather suggest that if velocity anomalies are to be explained by melts, these likely have considerable differences in chemical composition to the surrounding crystalline phase assemblage.}, language = {en} } @misc{SpiekermannHarderGilmoreetal.2019, author = {Spiekermann, Georg and Harder, M. and Gilmore, Keith and Zalden, Peter and Sahle, Christoph J. and Petitgirard, Sylvain and Wilke, Max and Biedermann, Nicole and Weis, Thomas and Morgenroth, Wolfgang and Tse, John S. and Kulik, E. and Nishiyama, Norimasa and Yava{\c{s}}, Hasan and Sternemann, Christian}, title = {Persistent Octahedral Coordination in Amorphous GeO₂ Up to 100 GPa by Kβ'' X-Ray Emission Spectroscopy}, series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {699}, issn = {1866-8372}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-42775}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-427755}, year = {2019}, abstract = {We measure valence-to-core x-ray emission spectra of compressed crystalline GeO₂ up to 56 GPa and of amorphous GeO₂ up to 100 GPa. In a novel approach, we extract the Ge coordination number and mean Ge-O distances from the emission energy and the intensity of the Kβ'' emission line. The spectra of high-pressure polymorphs are calculated using the Bethe-Salpeter equation. Trends observed in the experimental and calculated spectra are found to match only when utilizing an octahedral model. The results reveal persistent octahedral Ge coordination with increasing distortion, similar to the compaction mechanism in the sequence of octahedrally coordinated crystalline GeO₂ high-pressure polymorphs.}, language = {en} } @article{SpiekermannHarderGilmoreetal.2019, author = {Spiekermann, Georg and Harder, M. and Gilmore, Keith and Zalden, Peter and Sahle, Christoph J. and Petitgirard, Sylvain and Wilke, Max and Biedermann, Nicole and Weis, Thomas and Morgenroth, Wolfgang and Tse, John S. and Kulik, E. and Nishiyama, Norimasa and Yava{\c{s}}, Hasan and Sternemann, Christian}, title = {Persistent Octahedral Coordination in Amorphous GeO₂ Up to 100 GPa by Kβ'' X-Ray Emission Spectroscopy}, series = {Physical Review X}, volume = {9}, journal = {Physical Review X}, number = {1}, publisher = {American Physical Society by the American Institute of Physics}, address = {Melville, NY}, issn = {2469-9926}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevX.9.011025}, pages = {10}, year = {2019}, abstract = {We measure valence-to-core x-ray emission spectra of compressed crystalline GeO₂ up to 56 GPa and of amorphous GeO₂ up to 100 GPa. In a novel approach, we extract the Ge coordination number and mean Ge-O distances from the emission energy and the intensity of the Kβ'' emission line. The spectra of high-pressure polymorphs are calculated using the Bethe-Salpeter equation. Trends observed in the experimental and calculated spectra are found to match only when utilizing an octahedral model. The results reveal persistent octahedral Ge coordination with increasing distortion, similar to the compaction mechanism in the sequence of octahedrally coordinated crystalline GeO₂ high-pressure polymorphs.}, language = {en} }