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Collaborative Research for Earth and Applied Materials (CREAM)
News and updates:
19. 04/27/2018, Dr. Hu held a seminar at Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nevada Las Vegas.
Hu gave a seminar presentation at the UNLV with title 'Earth's Oxygen rich phases'.
18. 04/24/2018, Dr. Hu participated a colloquium at the Depatment of Earth Sciences, Nanjing University.
The colloquium at Nanjing University called on discussions of new advances in lower mantle chemistry, including the production of oxygen-rich domains from hydrous minerals, deep Earth's oxygen cycles and related hypothesis about Earth's geological events.
17. 04/20/2018, Dr. Hu visited Institute of Geology and Geophysics Chinese Academy of Science
The visit is for a on-going collaboration with the group led by Dr. Liwen Deng on the deep Earth oxygen-rich mineral project. A talk was given at the same time.
16. 04/19/2018, Dr. Hu gave a talk at the Geology Seminar at Peking University.
The name of the talk is 'Oxygen rich phases in Earth's deep mantle', introducing our recent progress in deep Earth chemistry.
15. 03/14/2018, Dr. Hu contributed a talk at the Deep Volatiles, Energy and Environments Summits at Shanghai.
The talk summarizes our recent progress on deep mantle chemistry.
14. 12/17/2017, Dr. Hu will lead a session at the Goldschmidt 2018 conference that will be held in Boston, MA, U.S.A from August 12-17, 2018.
Anyone interested in geochemistry, minerology or petrology is welcome to submit an abstract. [Abstract Link]
13. 12/15/2017, Dr. Hu contributed a talk at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting at New Orleans, LA, U.S.A.
The talk is about our theoreical work on the dehydrogenation of FeOOH at high pressure. The original work can be found here. [pdf]
12. 12/08/2017, Co-authored paper 'Revealing the formation mechanism of ultrahard nanotwinned diamond from onion carbon' is published by Carbon.
The project is led by Dr. Huiyang Gou. The work conducts comprehensive studies on the formation mechanism and pressure-temperature effects on nanotiwned diamond. Carbon. 129, 159-167 (2018).
11. 11/23/2017, 'Hydrogen-bearingiron peroxide and the origin of ultralow-velocity zones' is published by Nature.
This is a geoscience application of the pyriteFeO2Hx phase that is accumulating at the lowermost mantle. The slow seismic velocity travelling in FeO2Hx makes it a direct candidate to explain the mysterous ultra-low veocity zones at Earth's core-mantle boundary. Liu, J., Hu, Q., Kim, D. Y., Wu, Z., Wang, W., Xiao, Y., Paul, C., Meng, Y., Prakapenka, V. B., Mao, H.-K. and Mao, W. L. Nature, 551, 494-497 (2017). [pdf]
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10. 11/14/2017, Dr. Hu contributed a talk at the 1st HYU-HPSTAR-CIS workshop at Jeju, South Korea
The talk summarized our group's recent research on the mantle oxygen reservior and volatile cyclings (like O and H) in Earth's interiors.
9. 10/03/2017, Co-authored paper 'Two-Regimes of Bandgap Redshift and Partial Ambient Retention in Pressure Treated Two-dimensional Perovskites' is published by ACS Energy Letters.
The project is led by Dr. Liu Gang. The work presents the pressure effects on bandgap of 2D organic-inorganic perovskites. ACS Energy Lett. 2. 2518-2524 (2017). [pdf]
8. 09/27/2017, Dr. Hu contributed a poster at the 5th High Power Laser workshop at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA.
The poster is about the dehydrogenation mechanism of FeO2Hx as in our JACS paper.
7. 09/08/2017, 'When Water Meets Iron at Earth's Core-Mantle Boundary' is published by National Science Review.
In this work, we establish chemical reactions between any iron-oxides and water at core-mantle boundary condtions. The formation of py-phase from water and the inexhaustive core iron leaves a giant mantle oxygen reservior and will lead to the long-term chemical instability of the earth. H.-K. Mao, Q. Hu, L. Yang, J. Liu, D. Y. Kim, Y. Meng, L. Zhang, V. B. Prakapenka, W. Yang and W. L. Mao. Natl. Sci. Rev. 4, 870-878 (2017). [pdf]
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6. 08/22/2017, 'Hydrogen Bond Symmetrization Breakdown and Dehydrogenation Mechanism of FeO2H at High Pressure' is published by JACS.
The work combines simulation and experiment to report the transition and dehydrogenation mechanism of FeO2H under high pressure. S. Zhu, Q. Hu, W. L. Mao, H.-K. Mao, H. W. Sheng. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 139, 12129-12132 (2017). [pdf]
Spotlight by JACS
5. 08/21/2017, an invited talk 'Formation of FeO2 at high pressure and Earth's oxygen cycling' was presented at AIRAPT 26, Beijing.
The talk was given by Dr. Wenge Yang, who shows our previous work on the synthesis of FeO2 at Earth's mantle condition and how it can influence the cycling of elements in Earth's interiors.
4. 05/24/2017, Co-authored paper 'Structural evolution behavior of manganese monophosphide under high pressure: experimental and theoretical study' is published by JPCM.
This is a collaboration work with Dr. Zhenghai Yu and Dr. Lin Wang at HPSTAR. The paper report the structural evolution of MnP up to near megabar pressure. J. Phys. Condens. Matter, 29, 254002 (2017). [pdf]
3. 03/31/2017, 'Stability limits and transformation pathways of α-quartz under high pressure' is published by PRB.
In this work, the authors report two distinct high-pressure transition mechanism for quartz silica. In experiments, quartz follows a thermal activated pathway to a Si-O six-coordinated phase. Our simulation predicts under low-tempearture condition, quartz will transit to a metastable structure with oxygen b.c.c lattice induced by phonon instability. Q. Hu, J-F. Shu, W. G. Yang, C. Park, M. W. Chen, T. Fujita, H.-K. Mao, H. W. Sheng. Phys. Rev. B 95 104112 (2017). [pdf]
2. 03/13/ 2017 Dr. Hu contributed a talk 'Discovery of pyrite-structured FeO2 at high pressure' at American Physical Society March Meeting, New Orleans, LA.
In this talk, Dr. Hu used recent experimental and simulation results to depicts how hydrogen and oxygen are seperated and cycled in Earth's interiors.
1. 02/01/2017, 'Dehydrogenation of goethite in Earth’s deep lower mantle.' is published by PNAS.
In this study, the authors quantify the decomposition reaction of FeO2H to FeO2Hx and hydrogen and introduced how the release of hydrogen will rock redox equilibria at the bottom of Earth's mantle. Q. Hu, D. Y. Kim, J. Liu, Y. Meng, L. Yang, D. Zhang, W. L. Mao, H.-K. Mao. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 114, 1498-1501 (2017). [pdf]
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