Abstract. Solidification and crystal growth processes of hydrogen (H 2 ) have been studied under dynamic compression using dynamic-DAC (dDAC) in conjunction with time resolved Raman spectroscopy and high-speed microphotography. Liquid H 2 was compressed at a compression rate of 43 GPa/s across the liquid/solid phase boundary, causing a discontinuous vibron shift at the onset of solidification. The real time sample images, on the other hand, showed that H 2 solidifies into a characteristic, grain boundary free crystal, formed initially from the outside (or the edge of liquid) then grew into the central area within 11 ms. Interestingly, the time scale associated with the glassy solid formation is in good agreement with that of the discontinuous Raman frequency shift. The rate of crystal growth was measured to be 0.3 cm/s.
IntroductionCrystallization is a first order phase transition whereby nucleation is controlled by two factors; the difference in bulk free energy of the liquid and solid, and the interfacial free energy of the crystallite [1]. The interplay between the thermodynamics and kinetics of a system directs growth rates and polymorphism generating complexity in understanding crystallization process, which remains challenging even for simple systems [1,2]. In efforts to better understand the process of solidification in simple molecular systems a wealth of research has come from computational work of crystallization in super-cooled liquids [3][4][5][6][7][8]. Despite the significance, the experimental work studying the crystallization process of low-Z elemental molecules is lacking, as they are gaseous at ambient pressures [9]. Hydrogen, in particular, is of intense interest with predictions of conductivity in the condensed state [10] and superfluidity in the deeply cooled liquid [11]. Still, there is an incomplete understanding of the solidification and crystal growth process in hydrogen, especially at room temperature under high compression. This is, in part, due to a lacking diagnostic technique capable of probing the rapid process of solidification at time scales less than 1 s.In this paper we provide insight into the crystallization process of by novel spectroscopic and visual means in a highly compressed environment. To study the dynamic phenomena of rapid events such as solidification and melting in-situ the use of the dynamic diamond anvil cell (dDAC) [12] was employed in conjunction with time-resolved Raman spectroscopy (TRS). The dDAC has been used extensively to study pressure-induced crystal growth kinetics and morphology changes in water [13,14]. More interestingly, dDAC allows for the study of formation of metastable structures in supercompressed materials [15]. It has been well demonstrated that subjecting materials to sufficiently fast shock pressurization or thermal quenching may force a material of a particular phase out of its region