Ricerc@Sapienza

Physical, chemical and rheological properties of glasses and melts depend upon their structural arrangement at atomic scale. The extensive investigation conducted so far, mainly for industrial and volcanological purposes, lead to a rapid increase in diversification of technological materials and linked properties of erupted lavas to network structures in volcanic silicate melts and glasses. Conversely, very little is known for melts and magmas produced in the Earth's mantle, which are characterized by important amounts of volatiles (CO2, H2O) dissolved and are subject to considerable high pressure. This project aims to fill this gap through in-situ spectroscopic measurements combined with the use of a diamond anvil cell on synthetic volatile-bearing glasses representative of magmas that were observed to form in the Earth's mantle by experimental, geochemical and geophysical studies. Synchrotron micro-FTIR measurements in the mid-infrared region will be performed at the Material Science branch of SISSI beamline of Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste and Raman spectra will be acquired through the micro-Raman available at University of Roma Tre.
Results will be combined to in-situ multi-angle energy dispersive X-ray diffraction and viscosity measurements previously conducted at high pressure and temperature on the same molten starting materials at 16 BM-B HPCAT beamline of the Advanced Photon Source (Lemont, IL, USA) the Advanced Photon Source. This project will result in the use of the most innovative techniques in the field of Earth Sciences and will allow to evaluate the effect of pressure and volatile content on both the atomic structure and rheology of mantle magmas, to model their mobility and ascent and shed light on the flux of volatile species from the Earth's interior up to shallow depths.