128 A Tribute to Rodney C. Ewing: Celebrating a Half-Century of Transformative Contributions to Geoscience, Mineralogy, and Material Science
Honoring Prof. Rodney C. Ewing (1946–2024), this session celebrates over 50 years of groundbreaking contributions to mineralogy, geoscience, and materials science, from atomic-scale processes to field-scale applications.
Monday, 20 October 2025
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
HBGCC, 217A
Structural Transformations Induced at Extreme Conditions
Paper number: 128-1
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 1:35 PM – 1:55 PM
Authors
Abstract
A unique regime of extreme conditions can be induced in solids by their interaction with swift heavy ions travelling at relativistic energies (100s MeV – GeV). These projectiles are created by high-energy particle accelerators, nuclear fission, and cosmic events and deposit exceptional amounts of kinetic energy within an exceedingly short interaction time (less than fs) into nm-sized sample volumes. Extremely high energy densities are induced (up to tens of eV/atom), driving the local atomic structure far from equilibrium. This results in rapid phase transitions through equilibrium and non-equilibrium states and produces complex structural modifications within a highly localized nanoscale damage zone. The coupling of the extreme energy depositions of swift heavy ions with high pressure and high temperature leads to exciting applications at the interfaces of materials research, nuclear science, and geoscience. This experimental approach can be used to study the behavior of materials under extreme conditions, to form and stabilize novel phases, to manipulate the physical and chemical properties of solids at the nanoscale, and to investigate the effects of radioactive decay events in compressed and heated minerals of Earth’s interior. Due to their large penetration depth, swift heavy ions produce bulk amounts of homogeneously modified material which can be analyzed by spallation neutron and synchrotron X-ray characterization techniques. Such advanced characterization has revealed that radiation effects in materials are complex with locally ordered structural motifs arranged such that the average, long-range disordered structure does not represent the actual atomic configuration.
Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 57, No. 6
doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-413433
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