DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2022.0346 ISSN:
Stable and metastable structures of tin (IV) oxide at high pressure
Daniel T. Sneed, G. Alexander Smith, John S. C. Kearney, Christian Childs, Changyong Park, Keith V. Lawler, Ashkan Salamat, Dean Smith
We have analysed
SnO
2
with a combination of synchrotron X-ray diffraction and X-ray absorption spectroscopy across a pressure range of
0
→
82.9
GPa with thermal annealing by a
CO
2
laser allowing access to all of the known high-density polymorphs of
SnO
2
, and here report their crystallographic information. The metastability of the post-rutile
α
-
PbO
2
and
PdF
2
structures in
SnO
2
are investigated by experiment and PW-DFT simulations, revealing a complex energetic landscape and suggesting a significant dependence of the observed phases on the pressure–temperature pathway taken in experiment.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Exploring the length scales, timescales and chemistry of challenging materials (Part 1)’.