Phase Transition and Thermoelastic Behavior of Barite-Group Minerals at High-Pressure and High-Temperature Conditions

Experimental studies on the phase transition and thermoelastic behavior of barite-group minerals are crucial to understand the recycle of sulfur in Earth’s interior. Here, we present a high-pressure and high-temperature (high P–T) study on two barite-group minerals—barite (BaSO4) and celestite (SrSO4) up to ~ 59.5 GPa 700 K and ~ 22.2 GPa, 700 K, respectively, using in situ synchrotron-based X-ray diffraction (XRD) combined with diamond anvil cells (DACs). Our results show that BaSO4 undergoes a pressure-induced phase transition from Pbnm to P212121 at ~ 20.3 GPa, which is different from the previous results. Upon decompression, the high-pressure phase of BaSO4 transforms back into its initial structure, which indicates a reversible phase transition. However, no phase transitions have been detected in SrSO4 over the experimental P–T range. In addition, fitting a third-order Birch–Murnaghan equation of state to the pressure–volume data yields the bulk moduli and their pressure derivatives of BaSO4 and SrSO4. Simultaneously, the thermal expansion coefficients of BaSO4 and SrSO4 are also obtained, by fitting the temperature-volume data to the Fei-type thermal equation of state. Furthermore, the compositional effects on the phase transformation and thermoelastic behavior of barite-group minerals are also discussed, and the results suggest that the bond length of < M–O > (M=Ba, Sr, Pb) is an important factor that causes the phase transition pressure of SrSO4 to be the largest, PbSO4 is the second, and BaSO4 is the lowest.