IN-SITU HIGH PRESSURE AND TEMPERATURE INVESTIGATION ON IRON OXIDES AT DEEP EARTH’S INTERIOR CONDITIONS

Based on the DFT calculation, there is a rich phase diagram of iron oxides at deep Earth’s interior pressure and temperature conditions. With the advanced synchrotron techniques, we applied the in situ high pressure and temperature on the various combination of iron and oxygen to explore the possible new iron oxides. As the traditional aspect of the iron content changes to more and more iron rich oxides following Fe3O4->Fe2O3->FeO->pure Fe, the newly discovered FeO2 phase provides a new experimental evidence of oxygen rich phase is possible to be stored at mass amount at near core-mantle boundary. As this oxygen rich phase is stable in a certain pressure range, this new finding uncover a new oxygen cycling route and could be the origin of great oxidation event happened about 2.6 billion years ago. Further discussion on the other possible metal oxides under high pressure and temperature will be discussed.