A cylindrical SiC heater for an externally heated diamond anvil cell to 1500 K.

Semiconductor-based heaters for diamond anvil cells (DACs) have advantages over metal wire heaters in terms of repeated use and the ability to reach higher temperatures. We introduce a cylindrical SiC heater for an externally heated DAC (EHDAC) that works satisfactorily at temperatures up to 1500 K and pressures around 90 GPa. The heater is reusable and inexpensive, and only slight modifications to the DAC are required to fit the heater. Experiments on melting of NaCl and gold are conducted at ambient pressure to test the temperature accuracy of the EHDAC system, and resistance measurements on iodine at high pressures and temperatures are performed to assess the heater assembly. These test runs show that a uniform and accurate temperature can be maintained by the EHDAC assembly, which has potential applications to a variety of transport property measurements.

Experimental evidence for silica-enriched Earth's lower mantle with ferrous iron dominant bridgmanite.

Determination of the chemical composition of the Earth's mantle is of prime importance to understand the evolution, dynamics, and origin of the Earth. However, there is a lack of experimental data on sound velocity of iron-bearing Bridgmanite (Brd) under relevant high-pressure conditions of the whole mantle, which prevents constraints on the mineralogical model of the lower mantle. To uncover these issues, we have conducted sound-velocity measurement of iron-bearing Brd in a diamond-anvil cell (DAC) up to 124 GPa using Brillouin scattering spectroscopy. Here we show that the sound velocities of iron-bearing Brd throughout the whole pressure range of lower mantle exhibit an apparent linear reduction with the iron content. Our data fit remarkably with the seismic structure throughout the lower mantle with Fe2+-enriched Brd, indicating that the greater part of the lower mantle could be occupied by Fe2+-enriched Brd. Our lower-mantle model shows a distinctive Si-enriched composition with Mg/Si of 1.14 relative to the upper mantle (Mg/Si = 1.25), which implies that the mantle convection has been inefficient enough to chemically homogenize the Earth's whole mantle.