Ab initio study of high-pressure behavior of a low compressibility metal and a hard material:: Osmium and diamond -: art. no. 224107

We performed Density-Functional electronic structure calculations in order to investigate the high pressure behavior of Os beyond what is tractable experimentally with a diamond-anvil cell. In addition to the room-temperature and pressure structure hcp, two hypothetical structures of Os have been considered: fcc and omega (hexagonal phase with three atoms by unit cell). Phase transitions are suggested by these calculations. For calculating the bulk modulus, the reciprocal of the compressibility, of Os and that of diamond, the computed total energies vs volume curves were fit to three different equations of state. Several volume ranges have been considered during the fitting procedure. First, it is shown that the claim of Cynn and co-workers [Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 135701 (2002)] is confirmed at weak compression. Osmium is less compressible than diamond which is known as the hardest and the least compressible material. However, with increasing pressure osmium becomes more compressible than diamond. At strong compression, osmium transforms to the omega phase. It is also shown that the reconstructive phase transition hcp-->fcc could be induced by cooling in this low compressibility material.