Pat Kalita

Open AccessArticle by *, , , , and Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM 87125, USA * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Minerals 2023, 13(9), 1226; https://doi.org/10.3390/min13091226 (registering DOI) Received: 11 July 2023 / Revised: 22 August 2023 / Accepted: 30 August 2023 / Published: 18 September 2023 (This article belongs to the Special Issue Crystal Structures and Phase Transitions of Minerals at Extreme Conditions) 1.

2.3. Z-XRD Diagnostics X-ray diffraction of a crystalline solid is the coherent scattering of X-rays from its crystal lattice in which the X-ray’s wavelength and the crystal’s d-spacing satisfy Bragg’s law. A polycrystalline sample comprises of a large number of randomly oriented discrete crystals, so many of them will have the correct orientation that satisfy Bragg’s law.

Abstract Sapphire (Al2O3) is a major constituent of the Earth's mantle and has significant contributions to the field of high-pressure physics. Constraining its Hugoniot over a wide pressure range and identifying the location of shock-driven phase transitions allows for development of a multiphase equation of state and enables its use as an impedance-matching standard in shock physics experiments.