Ab initio study of the composition dependence of the pressure-induced spin crossover in perovskite (Mg_1-x,Fe_x)SiO₃

We present ab initio calculations of the zero-temperature iron high- to low-spin crossover in (Mg1−xFex)SiO3 perovskite at pressures relevant to Earth's lower mantle. Equations of state are fit for a range of compositions and used to predict the Fe spin transition pressure and associated changes in volume and bulk modulus. We predict a dramatic decrease in transition pressure as Fe concentration increases. This trend is contrary to that seen in ferropericlase, and suggests the energetics for spin crossover is highly dependent on the structural environment of Fe. Both Local Density Approximation (LDA) and Generalized Gradient Approximation (GGA) exchange-correlation methods are used, and both methods reproduce the same compositional trends. However, GGA gives a significantly higher transition pressure than LDA. The spin transition is made easier by the decreasing spin-flip energy with pressure but is also driven by the change in volume from high to low spin. Volume trends show that high-spin Fe2+ is larger than Mg2+ even under pressure, but low-spin Fe2+ is smaller at ambient conditions and approximately the same size as Mg2+ under high pressure, indicating that low-spin Fe2+ is less compressible than high-spin Fe2+. We find large changes between high- and low-spin in the slope of volume with Fe concentration. Although these changes are small in absolute magnitude for small Fe content, they are still important when measured per Fe and could be relevant for calculating partitioning coefficients in the lower mantle.