Yang Ding,¹, Rajeev Ahuja,² Jinfu Shu,³ Paul Chow,¹ Wei Luo,² and Ho-kwang Mao^1,3
1. HPCAT, Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Building 434E, 9700 South Cass Avenue,
Argonne, Illinois 60439, USA
2. Department of Physics, Condensed Matter Theory Group, Box 530, Uppsala University, SE-751 21 Uppsala, Sweden
3. Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 5251 Broad Branch Road NW, Washington, DC 20015, USA

Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 085502 (2007)

A phase transition was observed at 63–69 GPa and room temperature in vanadium with synchrotron x-ray diffraction. The transition is characterized as a rhombohedral lattice distortion of the body-centered-cubic vanadium without a discontinuity in the pressure-volume data, thus representing a novel type of transition that has never been observed in elements. Instead of driven by the conventional s-d electronic transition mechanism, the phase transition could be associated with the softening of C₄₄ trigonal elasticity tensor that originates from the combination of Fermi surface nesting, band Jahn-Teller distortion, and electronic topological transition.

This results also were highlighted by Carnegie Institution News Release, APS Sciences Highlights, and CDAC Science Highlights.
 

Link to previous monthly highlights

 
 1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20

 Updated on March 20, 2007, by Haozhe Liu