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Experimental investigation of the effect of nickel on the electrical resistivity of Fe-Ni and Fe-Ni-S alloys under pressure

  • Anne Pommier ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: June 30, 2020
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American Mineralogist
From the journal American Mineralogist Volume 105 Issue 7

Abstract

Electrical resistivity experiments were conducted on three alloys in the iron-rich side of the Fe-Ni(-S) system (Fe-5 wt% Ni, Fe-10 wt% Ni, Fe-10 wt% Ni-5 wt% S) at 4.5 and 8 GPa and up to 1900 K using the multi-anvil apparatus and the 4-electrode technique. For all samples, increasing temperature increases resistivity. At a specified temperature, Fe-Ni(-S) alloys are more resistive than Fe by a factor of about 3. Fe-Ni alloys containing 5 and 10 wt% Ni present comparable electrical resistivity values. The resistivity of Fe-Ni(-S) alloys is comparable to the one of Fe = 5 wt% S at 4.5 GPa and is about three times higher than the resistivity of Fe = 5 wt% S at 8 GPa, due to a different pressure dependence of electrical resistivity between Fe-Ni and Fe-S alloys. Based on these electrical results and experimentally determined thermal conductivity values from the literature, lower and upper bounds of thermal conductivity were calculated. For all Ni-bearing alloys, thermal conductivity estimates range between ~12 and 20 W/(m⋅K) over the considered pressure and temperature ranges. Adiabatic heat fluxes were computed for both Ganymede’s core and the Lunar core, and heat flux values suggest a significant dependence to both core composition and the adiabatic temperature. Comparison with previous thermochemical models of the cores of Ganymede and the Moon suggests that some studies may have overestimated the thermal conductivity and hence, the heat flux along the adiabat in these planetary cores.

Keywords: Iron-nickel alloys; metallic cores; electrical resistivity; multi-anvil apparatus; Ganymede, the Moon

Acknowledgments

Part of this work was performed while the author was invited professor at the Université de Lille, France. The author is grateful to Anne-Marie Blanchenet for her help with SEM analyses and Séverine Bellanger for microprobe analyses at the electron probe microanalyzer (EPMA) facility in Lille. Both are part of the ARCHI-CM project, supported by the Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche, Région Nord-Pas de Calais and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). A.P. also thanks Sébastien Merkel for hosting her during her stay in Lille, and Christopher Davies and James Badro for fruitful discussions. The author is grateful to Heather Watson for her conscientious editorial work and two Reviewers for their thorough comments that improved the manuscript.

  1. Funding

    This work was supported by NSF-CAREER grant 1750746 and NSF-NERC grant 1832462. Use of the COMPRES Cell Assembly Project was supported by COMPRES under NSF Cooperative Agreement EAR 1661511. The electrical cell used in these experiments is available via COMPRES.

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Received: 2019-09-25
Accepted: 2020-01-29
Published Online: 2020-06-30
Published in Print: 2020-07-28

© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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https://doi.org/10.2138/am-2020-7301
Keywords for this article
Iron-nickel alloys; metallic cores; electrical resistivity; multi-anvil apparatus; Ganymede, the Moon

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Experimental determination of the solubility constant of kurnakovite, MgB3O3(OH)5·5H2O
  2. Elastic properties of majoritic garnet inclusions in diamonds and the seismic signature of pyroxenites in the Earth’s upper mantle
  3. Establishing a protocol for the selection of zircon inclusions in garnet for Raman thermobarometry
  4. Reversely zoned plagioclase in lower crustal meta-anorthosites: An indicator of multistage fracturing and metamorphism in the lower crust
  5. High-pressure silica phase transitions: Implications for deep mantle dynamics and silica crystallization in the protocore
  6. The Cr-Zr-Ca armalcolite in lunar rocks is loveringite: Constraints from electron backscatter diffraction measurements
  7. Effects of composition and pressure on electronic states of iron in bridgmanite
  8. Ti diffusion in feldspar
  9. Radiation-induced defects in montebrasite: An electron paramagnetic resonance study of O– hole and Ti3+ electron centers
  10. New IR spectroscopic data for determination of water abundances in hydrous pantelleritic glasses
  11. Experimental investigation of the effect of nickel on the electrical resistivity of Fe-Ni and Fe-Ni-S alloys under pressure
  12. An experimental approach to examine fluid-melt interaction and mineralization in rare-metal pegmatites
  13. Crystal-chemistry of sulfates from the Apuan Alps (Tuscany, Italy). VI. Tl-bearing alum-(K) and voltaite from the Fornovolasco mining complex
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  15. First-principles modeling of X-ray absorption spectra enlightens the processes of scandium sequestration by iron oxides
  16. Effects of the dissolution of thermal barrier coating materials on the viscosity of remelted volcanic ash
  17. New Mineral Names
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