Electronic Structure of CO2 at High Pressure

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the important planetary materials that can be found in the Venus, Earth and Mars. Therefore, the behavior of CO2 under different pressure and temperature conditions is of great importance for understanding the evolution of these planets. Recent studies showed that there are six solid phases and one amorphous phase of CO2 found at various pressure and temperature conditions. This indicates that CO2 may exhibit different forms within planetary interiors. To better understand the behavior of CO2 polymorphs and their interactions with other materials it is necessary to study the electronic structures of CO2 polymorphs. Here we report the electronic structures of CO2-I and -III at high pressure and room temperature. The high-pressure inelastic scattering measurements of CO2 were conducted at beamline 12XU, SPring-8. A monochromatic beam with incident energy about 10 KeV was focused by a pair of KB mirrors to a size of 20 by 30 μm2. The inelastic x-ray scattering photons were collected at about 35 degrees and a solid state Si detector with resolution of about 1.4eV was used. Each spectrum was collected for 8-20 hours. Our results show that a strong pi bond, together with weak sigma bonds of oxygen K-edge were observed in CO2-I and -III phase. For the carbon K-edge of CO2-I, only a single pi bond was observed. This suggests that the molecular solid phase of CO2-I exhibits a gas-like phase instead of a crystal-like phase. Similar results were also observed form CO2-III.