Studies of Silver Acetate at Extreme Conditions

Abstract

With an aim of exploring further chemical systems that may metallize when irradiated with hard X-rays, we studied select silver acetate (AgC₂H₃O₂). An equation of state was obtained for silver acetate. X-ray-induced decomposition of silver acetate under ambient and high-pressures conditions was observed in a diamond anvil cell (DAC), leading to the formation of metallic nanograins of silver at ambient and 1.65 GPa. At 4 GPa, no decomposition was observed. The Avrami kinetics equation also provides information about novel structural formation at ambient and 1.65 GPa pressure. By modeling XRD data, the size of the formation of silver nano crystallite size at 1.65 GPa pressure was found to grow to 5.1 ± 0.01 nm upon X-ray irradiation when the data are fitted with the Boltzmann sigmoidal function. Time-resolved X-ray diffraction (XRD) reveals pressure-dependent kinetics, demonstrating that coupling pressure with irradiation enables controlled photochemical pathways in this model system. Concurrent with previous studies, the application of high pressure (HP) can be considered as a means of controlling X-ray synthetic photochemistry.