Journal
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 2, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE RESEARCH
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1566
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Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [11025418, 91022029]
- China 973 Program [2011CB808200]
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Water ice dissociates into a superionic solid at high temperature (> 2,000 K) and pressure, where oxygen forms the lattice, but hydrogen diffuses completely. At low temperature, however, the dissociation into an ionic ice of hydronium (H3O)(+) hydroxide (OH)(-) is not expected because of the extremely high energy cost (similar to 1.5 eV) of proton transfer between H2O molecules. Here we show the pressure-induced formation of a partially ionic phase (monoclinic P2(1) structure) consisting of coupled alternate layers of (OH)(delta-) and (H3O)(delta+) (delta = 0.62) in water ice predicted by particle-swarm optimization structural search at zero temperature and pressures of > 14 M Mbar. The occurrence of this ionic phase follows the break-up of the typical O-H covalently bonded tetrahedrons in the hydrogen symmetric atomic phases and is originated from the volume reduction favourable for a denser structure packing.
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