Ivan Oleynik
University of South Florida, FL·Earth & Environmental Science
Earth's magnetic field comes from its core, which is mostly iron with smaller amounts of lighter elements such as sulfur. Pressures and temperatures in the core are far too extreme to sample directly.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Physics
Materials Science
- Topics
Earth's core
inner core
iron-sulfur alloys
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Determine which crystal structures iron-sulfur (Fe-S) alloys adopt at Earth's core pressures and temperatures, using laser-driven compression and in-situ X-ray diffraction, which reveals atomic structure during the experiment.
- Measure how sulfur changes iron's melting behavior at extreme conditions, using shock-ramp experiments that melt the sample with a shock and then slowly re-squeeze it solid.
- Model Fe-S melting, crystallization and phase transitions under rapid compression with machine learning molecular dynamics simulations, which compute atom motions to help interpret the experiments.
- Test whether crystallization of Fe-S liquid into stable alloy phases can explain the uneven structures in Earth's inner core revealed by seismic studies.
More about the research
They are also hard to recreate in the lab. As a result, scientists still do not know which solid structures form there or how sulfur changes iron's melting point. Seismic studies, which track earthquake waves through the planet, show that the inner core has complex, uneven structure. Explaining that structure needs data on iron alloys at core conditions.
Why it matters
This is basic research. Measuring how iron-sulfur alloys melt and crystallize at core conditions provides data needed to estimate the temperature and structure of Earth's core. It could help explain the uneven inner-core structure seen in seismic studies. This, in turn, could inform models of the core that generates Earth's magnetic field.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Susannah Dorfman
Michigan State University, MI·Earth & Environmental Science
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.
Abdellah Lisfi
Morgan State University, MD·Materials Science
Test whether two-phase nanostructures break the spin-orbit coupling link to produce large magnetostriction with weak anisotropy in Fe-Ga-based alloys containing aluminum or germanium.
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.
The school
University of South Florida: 20 labs on PI Pages, $522M a year on research, 305 research doctorates a year.
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