The structure of Fe-Ni alloy in Earth's inner core

The crystal structure of Fe-10%Ni was investigated up to 340GPa and 4700K, corresponding to the Earth's inner core conditions by synchrotron X-ray diffraction measurements in-situ at ultrahigh pressure and temperature in a laser-heated diamond-anvil cell. The results show that hexagonal closed-packed (hcp) structure is stable throughout the experimental conditions investigated with no evidence for a phase transition to body-centered cubic (bcc) or face-centered cubic (fcc) phases. The axial c/a ratio of the hcp crystal obtained around 330GPa has a small temperature dependence similar to the axial ratio of pure Fe. Iron alloy with less than 10% Ni crystallizes to an hcp structure with c/a ratio of ∼1.61 at inner core conditions, although the effect of small amount of light elements remains to be examined by experiments.