Susannah Dorfman
Michigan State University, MI·Earth & Environmental Science
Sodium may seem like a minor ingredient deep inside Earth, but it matters. It builds up where fluids cycle through the planet and in oceanic crust that sinks into the mantle.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Physics
Materials Science
- Topics
sodium
lower mantle
ferropericlase
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Measure the sodium content of ferropericlase, (Mg,Fe)O, under sodium-saturated lower-mantle conditions, using laser-heated diamond anvil cells that reproduce deep-Earth pressures and temperatures.
- Determine how sodium divides between ferropericlase and the other main lower-mantle minerals, bridgmanite and davemaoite, in high-pressure experiments run with these minerals together.
- Test which mechanisms for dissolving sodium into lower-mantle minerals are most favorable, using density functional theory calculations.
- Identify the dominant lower-mantle host for sodium and predict the seismic properties of sodium-bearing mantle by combining experiments and simulations.
More about the research
Sodium makes rocks melt more easily and helps fluids conduct electricity. That makes its chemistry at extreme pressures and temperatures important for understanding how carbon and water cycle through Earth's interior. Yet it is still unclear where sodium is stored in the lower mantle, the planet's largest layer, and how much of it the mantle can hold.
Why it matters
Better data on where sodium lives in the deep mantle can improve thermodynamic and geophysical models of Earth's interior. That helps geoscientists estimate mantle composition and patchiness more accurately, model the deep cycles of water and carbon, and read the mantle's record of plate tectonics. The work also adds basic insight into how salts and chemical bonds behave at high pressure.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jie Li
University of Michigan, MI·Earth & Environmental Science
Synthesize Ruddlesden-Popper iridates (Srn+1IrnO3n+1) under high pressure and temperature, with chemical doping, to search for exotic magnetism, Mott insulating states and possible superconductivity, guided by Dynamic Mean Field Theory.
George Amulele
Case Western Reserve University, OH·Earth & Environmental Science
Measure the electrical conductivity of pure potassium liebermannite and potassium–sodium mixtures across pressure and temperature, using impedance spectroscopy in a multi-anvil high-pressure device.
Jason Nicholas
Michigan State University, MI·Materials Science
Test whether the previously observed shift in the wadsleyite-to-ringwoodite transformation can be reproduced in anhydrous Mg2SiO4 thin films grown by pulsed laser deposition, using diamond anvil cells with synchrotron X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy.
The school
Michigan State University: 28 labs on PI Pages, $932M a year on research, 555 research doctorates a year.
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