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research article

Fe-Ni ideality during core formation on Earth

Huang, Dongyang
•
Badro, James  
October 1, 2018
American Mineralogist

Earth's core is essentially composed of a light-element bearing iron-nickel alloy (Birch 1964). The nickel content in the core has negligible effects on physical properties such as density and compressibility (e.g., Lin et al. 2003; Kantor et al. 2007; Martorell et al. 2013; Badro et al. 2014). This deters any attempt to determine or even estimate the nickel content of the core using seismological models, as in the case of light elements. It was recently proposed that the presence of nickel should fractionate iron isotopes in small planetary cores (Elardo and Shahar 2017), but the effect for a large (hot) planet such as the Earth would not be measurable; this observation, however, opens up the possibility that Ni can have an effect on element partitioning between the metallic alloy and the silicate melt during core formation. In this case, the siderophile trace-element composition of the mantle would, in turn, constrain the Fe/Ni ratio in the core. Here, we investigated the effect of nickel concentration in the metallic alloy on the partitioning of other elements at conditions directly relevant to core formation, using the laser-heated diamond-anvil cell. We found no measurable effect of nickel concentration on the partitioning of Ni, Cr, and V; the Fe-Ni alloy is chemically ideal over a broad range of Ni concentrations (3.5 to 48.7 wt%). The ideality of the Fe-Ni solution across a wide range of nickel concentration shows that Fe and Ni are not only twins from the standpoint for material properties, but also from that of chemical properties in those high P-T conditions.

  • Details
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Type
research article
DOI
10.2138/am-2018-6651
Web of Science ID

WOS:000445855200017

Author(s)
Huang, Dongyang
Badro, James  
Date Issued

2018-10-01

Publisher

MINERALOGICAL SOC AMER

Published in
American Mineralogist
Volume

103

Issue

10

Start page

1707

End page

1710

Subjects

Geochemistry & Geophysics

•

Mineralogy

•

Geochemistry & Geophysics

•

Mineralogy

•

fe-ni "ideality"

•

core formation

•

metal-silicate partitioning

•

high pressure

•

silicate partition-coefficients

•

deep magma-ocean

•

high-pressure

•

siderophile elements

•

melt composition

•

oxidation-state

•

wave velocities

•

metal

•

iron

•

constraints

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
EPSL  
Available on Infoscience
December 13, 2018
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/152211
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