No abstract

In the areas of condensed matter physics, geoscience, material science, and inorganic chemistry, how the crystal structures evolve under an external field such as high-pressure is a fundamental question. By taking TiSe2 as the case, we investigate the phase transformations of the layered transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) under high-pressure. The ambient 6-fold P-3m1 TiSe2 undergoes a transformation into the monoclinic 8-fold coordinated C2/m phase at 15 GPa and then into the hexagonal 9-fold Fe2P-type structure at 34 GPa. The above phase transitions can be unitedly described as the evolution of the vacancies: from a layered structure with two-dimensional (2D) vacancies to the structure with one-dimensional (1D) and zero-dimensional (0D) vacancies. The proposed densification model of TiSe2 reveals the processes how the symmetry breaking phase of spatial chemical bonding restores the symmetry under the isotropic external pressure.

At ambient conditions, alkali metal cesium (Cs) owns a body-centered cubic phase, and this phase will transform to a face-centered cubic (fcc) phase at a pressure of 2.3 GPa. Under stronger compression, Cs will transform to oC84, tI4, oC16, and double hexagonal close-packed (dhcp) phases in sequence. Here, using first-principles structure searching prediction and total-energy calculation, we report that the Cs will re-transform to the fcc phase as the post-dhcp phase above 180 GPa. The transition state calculations suggest that the phase transition takes place by overcoming an energy barrier (144 meV/atom at 200 GPa) and finishes within a volume collapse of 0.3%. The electronic states at Fermi level are derived mainly from d electrons and there is a large overlap between inner core electrons, making the high-pressure fcc Cs distinguished from the first one at low pressure. The same phase transition also occurs in potassium and rubidium but with higher pressures.