2010/10/01 by U. Chandra, G. Parthasarathy, Pooja Sharma · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Crystal Structures and Properties #Astro and Planetary Science
paper · doi:10.3749/canmin.48.5.1137
openalex publication_date 2010/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/07
Cubanite, the orthorhombic polymorph of CuFe 2 S 3 , is very sensitive to temperature, pressure and compositional variations. This sensitivity has prevented its successful synthesis in a controlled laboratory environment. We report here the first successful synthesis of cubanite and its high-pressure Mossbauer spectroscopic and electrical properties up to 7 GPa. We also compare the Mossbauer spectroscopic and electrical resistivity results on our synthetic cubanite with the behavior of naturally occurring cubanite under identical conditions. The magnetic hyperfine field, a sensitive Mossbauer parameter of the synthetic sample, corresponds to that of orthorhombic cubanite. We report here the pressure-induced transformation of the magnetic sextet (cubanite) to a paramagnetic doublet (isocubanite) at ~4 GPa at room temperature. This transformation has been confirmed independently by our electrical resistivity measurements up to 7 GPa. The present results could be useful in estimating the metamorphic pressure conditions of cubanite-bearing carbonaceous chondrites.