Achary, S. N.; Patwe, S. J.; Tyagi, A. K.; Bose, P. P.; Mittal, R.; Shinde, A. B.; Krishna, P. S. R.; Chaplot, S. L.; Narayana, C.; Pradhan, G. K.; Banik, S.; Deb, S. K. (ChD;SSPD)
Source
Journal of Physics-Conference Series, 2012. Vol. 377 (1): pp. 012031
ABSTRACT
Herein we report the results of high pressure diffraction studies of zircon type ThGeO4. ThGeO4 exhibits anisotropic compressibility with the average compressibility along a-axis (20.8 × 10-4/GPa) larger than that along c-axis (9.98 × 10-4/GPa). Fitting the pressure dependence unit cell volume to 3rd order Birch-Murnaghan equation of states, the zero pressure bulk modulus (Ko) and volume (Vo) of 166(5) GPa and 341.6(3) Å3, respectively have been obtained. Preliminary studies on temperature dependent neutron and x-ray diffraction studies on ThGeO4 revealed anisotropic expansion behaviour with larger expansion coefficient along c-axis compared to a-axis. No structural transition under temperature or pressure is observed in between ambient pressure to 10 GPa and in the temperature range of 25 to 1273K.