Measurement of high-pressure crystal structure and the pressure-temperature melt conditions in shock-compressed silicon carbide

Silicon Carbide (SiC) has many attractive properties including low density, high strength, high melting point, low wear coefficient and high chemical stability that lead to its extensive use in a wide range of industrial applications including as abrasives, shielding material on space craft,^, personal armor and as a potential ablator material for fusion capsules. Silicon carbide is also important in geology and planetary science. SiC grains - found in meteorites and impact sites – have an unusual isotopic signature which indicate that they are pre-solar in origin and provide constraints on stellar nucleosynthesis and on the stellar sources for the origin of the solar system. Several studies have also explored possible interior structure of carbon-rich planets in which SiC is a likely main constituent, but experimental data for the high-pressure properties of SiC is currently unavailable to test these models. Here we report on laser-driven nanosecond x-ray diffraction and shock-decay experiments on the Omega-EP laser facility located at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (NY, USA). We present new data on the high-pressure crystal structure, and pressure-temperature conditions for melt in single-crystal SiC samples.