Stability at high pressure, elastic behavior and pressure-induced structural evolution of “Al5BO9”, a mullite-type ceramic material

Abstract

Elastic behavior and pressure-induced structural evolution of synthetic boron-mullite “Al5BO9” (a = 5.678(2) Å, b = 15.015(4) Å and c = 7.700(3) Å, space group Cmc21, Z = 4) were investigated up to 7.4 GPa by in situ single-crystal X-ray diffraction with a diamond anvil cell under hydrostatic conditions. No phase transition or anomalous compressional behavior occurred within the investigated P range. Fitting the P–V data with a truncated second-order (in energy) Birch-Murnaghan Equation-of-State (BM-EoS), using the data weighted by the uncertainties in P and V, we obtained: V 0 = 656.4(3) Å3 and K T0 = 165(7) GPa (β V0 = 0.0061(3) GPa−1). The evolution of the Eulerian finite strain versus normalized stress (f E–F E plot) leads to an almost horizontal trend, showing that a truncated second-order BM-EoS is appropriate to describe the elastic behavior of “Al5BO9” within the investigated P range. The weighted linear regression through the data points gives: F E(0) = 159(11) GPa. Axial compressibility coefficients yielded: β a = 1.4(2) × 10−3 GPa−1, β b = 3.4(4) × 10−3 GPa−1, and β c = 1.7(3) × 10−3 GPa−1 (β a :β b :β c = 1:2.43:1.21). The highest compressibilities observed in this study within (100) can be ascribed to the presence of voids represented by five-membered rings of polyhedra: Al1–Al3–Al4–Al1–Al3, which allow accommodating the effect of pressure by polyhedral tilting. Polyhedral tilting around the voids also explains the higher compressibility along [010] than along [001]. The stiffer crystallographic direction observed here might be controlled by the infinite chains of edge-sharing octahedra running along [100], which act as “pillars”, making the structure less compressible along the a-axis than along the b- and c-axis. Along [100], compression can only be accommodated by deformation of the edge-sharing octahedra (and/or by compression of the Al–O bond lengths), as no polyhedral tilting can occur. In addition, a comparative elastic analysis among the mullite-type materials is carried out.