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Aluminium

Simple metal no more

Nature Materials volume 9, pages 607–608 (2010)Cite this article

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Aluminium is regarded as a simple system in which to test for phenomena occurring at high pressure. Ab initio calculations now show that this metal undergoes a surprising transition to an incommensurate structure when it is subjected to extremely high pressures.

Over the past 50 years, a huge amount of information has been obtained on the structures adopted by materials at high pressures. The development of quantum mechanical calculations over the same period has helped to understand the physics behind such behaviours and has allowed the prediction of further transitions. Such calculations have typically used previously known structure types and have compared the relative stability of different phases at different densities, which usually precludes the prediction of new structures altogether. About 11 years ago, a new elemental structure type was discovered in barium, which was found to transform to an aperiodic form above 0.01 TPa, with a structure that consists of an eight-atom host framework that contains linear chains of guest atoms with a spacing incommensurate with the host6. Subsequent experiments found not only a second host–guest structure type with a 16-atom host in rubidium, but that eight other elements also adopt host–guest structures at high pressures7.

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Figure 1: The host–guest structure of incommensurate aluminium, shown in projection down the c axis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Malcolm I. McMahon and Graeme J. Ackland are part of the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA), and in the School of Physics and Astronomy, and the Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.,

    Malcolm I. McMahon & Graeme J. Ackland

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  1. Malcolm I. McMahon
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  2. Graeme J. Ackland
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Correspondence to Malcolm I. McMahon.

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McMahon, M., Ackland, G. Simple metal no more. Nature Mater 9, 607–608 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2817

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