Fig. 1: Melting temperatures of Fe–C alloys at core conditions.
From: Constraining Earth’s core composition from inner core nucleation
Upper: Melting temperatures (points) calculated using two-phase coexistence simulations of Fe1−xCx systems (where x is molar fraction). The dotted line shows the melting curve of pure Fe from Alfè et al.36 for reference. Solid lines are fits to data (2nd degree polynomial for xC = 0.02, 0.04, 0.06 and linear for xC = 0.08, 0.10). The grey shaded region shows the P range of the Earth’s inner core. Lower: Interpolation of points in the upper panel gives Tm(330 GPa, xC) and Tm(360 GPa, xC), shown as up and down pointing triangles, respectively. These conditions represent the present-day ICB and the centre of Earth, respectively. The Fe1−xOx result of Davies et al.30 at 323 GPa is shown for comparison (red points and line).
