High-pressure phase of magnetite

Mössbauer spectroscopy and x-ray diffraction were employed to investigate the magnetic and structural properties of the high-pressure monoclinic phase of magnetite. Measurements were performed to 66 GPa at 300 K using diamond anvil cells. Based primarily upon the Mössbauer parameters, the following features of the high-pressure phase were deduced. With increasing pressure the high-pressure phase evolves at P25 GPa and its abundance increases monotonically at the expense of the low-pressure cubic phase. The high-pressure phase is not magnetic at 300 K and its monoclinic structural features resemble that of the low-pressure phase. The tetrahedral and octahedral sites characteristic of the inverse spinel structure, albeit distorted, remain the building blocks of the high-pressure phase. The fast electron hopping between Fe3+ and Fe2+ at the octahedral sites prevails to the highest pressure. It is suggested that the cubic→monoclinic→cubic hysteretic cycle involves a mild displacive phase transition not affecting the coordination number of any of the iron cations.