The Earth's core consists of iron as the major component. The melting point of iron at the inner core boundary constrains the thermal structure and solidification of the Earth's core. However, the current estimation of the melting temperature of iron under the core conditions has significant variations. Here, we measured the temperatures of iron shocked up to ~256 GPa using precise pyrometer and velocimeter diagnostics via a two‐stage light‐gas gun. Our results indicated that the melting temperatures of iron at the core‐mantle and inner core boundaries are 4300(250) and 5950(400) K, respectively. These temperatures are significantly lower than some previous shock experiments but are overall consistent with the recent results determined by fast X‐ray diffraction techniques, X‐ray absorption experiments in laser‐heated diamond anvil cells, and by ab initio computations. Our iron melting curve indicates a relatively small Clapeyron slope and supports thermal models for a young inner core.

Yield properties, phase transition, and equation of state of aluminum nitride (AlN) under shock compression up to 150 GPaThe high-pressure melting curve of tantalum (Ta) has been the center of a long-standing controversy. Sound velocities along the Hugoniot curve are expected to help in understanding this issue. To that end, we employed a direct-reverse impact technique and velocity interferometry to determine sound velocities of Ta under shock compression in the 10-110 GPa pressure range. The measured longitudinal sound velocities show an obvious kink at $60 GPa as a function of shock pressure, while the bulk sound velocities show no discontinuity. Such observation could result from a structural transformation associated with a negligible volume change or an electronic topological transition.

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The sound velocities of vanadium at shock pressure ranging from 154 to 250 GPa were determined using transparent-window optical analyser techniques. A discontinuity in sound velocities at about 225 GPa may mark the partial melting under shock compression. The comparison between the measured sound velocity data sets above ∼225 GPa and calculated values yields γ 0 ≈ 2.0 and the empirical expression γρ = γ 0 ρ 0 is basically tenable. Additionally, shock temperatures along the principal Hugoniot of vanadium were also determined from interfacial radiation intensities according to Grover's ideal interface model. Thus the temperature at this solid-liquid phase transition was constrained to be round about 7800(±800) K on the basis of the measured Hugoniot temperatures, melting temperatures, and high-pressure sound velocity variations with pressure.

Deformation twinning in pure aluminum has been considered to be a unique property of nanostructured aluminum. A lingering mystery is whether deformation twinning occurs in coarse-grained or single-crystal aluminum, at scales beyond nanotwins. Here, we present the first experimental demonstration of macro deformation twins in single-crystal aluminum formed under ultrahigh strain-rate (∼10 6 s −1 ), large shear strain (200%) via dynamic equal channel angular pressing. Deformation twinning is rooted in the rate dependences of dislocation motion and twinning, which are coupled, complementary processes during severe plastic deformation under ultrahigh strain rates.When we talk about crystal deformation, what do we actually talk about? Crystal defects [1]. Crystal defects such as dislocations (line defects) and twins (planar defects) play a critical role in plastic deformation and ultimately govern the multifarious mechanical behaviors of many crystalline materials [2,3]. While both dislocation slip and deformation twinning are dependent on an intrinsic material property -stacking fault energy [4,5] (SFE), their sensitivities to SFE differ considerably. A notable example is pure aluminum, a typical face-centered cubic (fcc) metal with high SFE (104-142 mJ m −2 ) [6], in which deformation twinning rarely occurs even deformed at low temperatures and/or at high strain rates [7,8]. This rareness of deformation twinning in such materials is normally attributed to the following two reasons: (i) a large number of slip systems in fcc metals render dislocation slip a very efficient deformation mode [9,10], and (ii) the nucleation of twinning partial dislocations require much higher shear stresses than trailing partial dislocations due to the high unstable twin fault energy [11]. Searching for macro deformation twins in pure aluminum and revealing the underlying mechanisms have been of sustained interest in the past decade.Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations first predicted that nanoscale deformation twins can nucleate under high tensile stress (2.5 GPa) and high strain rate (10 7 s −1 ) in nanograined aluminum [6,12], and subsequent experiments confirmed this prediction in nanograined aluminum films under different kinds of severe plastic deformation (SPD) [13][14][15]. One explanation was proposed based on classical dislocation theory [16]: when grain size decreases to tens of nanometers, normal dislocation activities are greatly suppressed by the high fraction of grain boundaries (GBs); as a result, deformation twinning takes over as the dominant deformation mechanism [13]. Besides nanograin size effect, many simulation and experimental studies suggest that deformation twinning prefers to occur at high strain rates in fcc metals [17,18]. This rate-dependent twinning mechanism has been corrobarated by a very recent experiment on pure aluminum with comparatively large nanograins (50-100 nm) [19]. However, there has been no solid evidence for deformation twinning in single-crystal or coarse-grained pure aluminum. It is natural ...