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Direct observations of transient weakening during phase transformations in quartz and olivine

Nature Geoscience volume 18, pages 548–554 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Phase transformations are widely invoked as a source of rheological weakening during subduction, continental collision, mantle convection and various other geodynamic phenomena. However, despite more than half a century of research, the likelihood and magnitude of such weakening in nature remain poorly constrained. Here we use experiments performed on a synchrotron beamline to reveal transient weakening of up to three orders of magnitude during the polymorphic quartz to coesite (SiO2) and olivine to ringwoodite (Fe2SiO4) phase transitions. Weakening becomes increasingly prominent as the transformation outpaces deformation. We suggest that this behaviour is broadly applicable among silicate minerals undergoing first-order phase transitions and examine the likelihood of weakening due to the olivine-spinel, (Mg,Fe)2SiO4, transformation during subduction. Modelling suggests that cold, wet slabs are most susceptible to transformational weakening, consistent with geophysical observations of slab stagnation in the mantle transition zone beneath the western Pacific. Our study highlights the importance of incorporating transformational weakening into geodynamic simulations and provides a quantitative basis for doing so.

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Fig. 1: Schematic diagram of the D-DIA cell assembly used in this study.
Fig. 2: Mechanical evolution under hydrostatic and non-hydrostatic conditions.
Fig. 3: Evolution of apparent SiO2 viscosity as a function of temperature and deformation rate.
Fig. 4: Magnitude of transient weakening, FW, versus the ratio between the transformation and deformation strain rates, FR.
Fig. 5: Microstructure of samples quenched mid-way through the quartz→coesite phase transformation under non-hydrostatic conditions.
Fig. 6: Transient weakening factor, FW, as a function of water content, temperature and differential stress in a subducting slab.

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Data availability

The stress, strain and phase proportion measurements for each experimental run provided in Supplementary Data 1 and Supplementary Videos 1–14 are also publicly available via Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.28726712 (ref. 50).

Code availability

The MATLAB code used for the slab weakening model is provided in Supplementary Code 1 and is also publicly available via Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.28726712 (ref. 50).

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Acknowledgements

We thank L. Tokle and A. Dillman for providing the quartz and olivine starting materials, respectively. This work was funded through National Science Foundation (NSF) awards EAR-2023128 (to A.J.C.), EAR-2003389 (to A.J.C.), EAR-2023058 (to D.L.G.), EAR-2023061 (to L.N.H.) and EAR-1806791 (to K.M.K.). D.W. was supported by a UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship, MR/V021788/1. A.J.C. acknowledges additional salary support from the Investment in Science Program (ISP) and Assistant Scientist Endowment Support (ASES) programmes at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). Use of the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under contract number DE-AC02-06CH11357. Use of the 6-BM-B beamline was supported by COMPRES, the Consortium for Materials Properties Research in Earth Sciences, under NSF Cooperative Agreement EAR 16-06856. Portions of this work were performed under the auspices of the US Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. LLNL-JRNL-859365.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geology and Geophysics, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, USA

    Andrew J. Cross & Rellie M. Goddard

  2. Department of Geology, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, ON, Canada

    Rellie M. Goddard

  3. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA

    Kathryn M. Kumamoto

  4. Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    David L. Goldsby

  5. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Lars N. Hansen, Diede Hein & M. Adaire Nehring

  6. Mineral Physics Institute, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA

    Haiyan Chen

  7. Rhenium Alloys, North Ridgeville, OH, USA

    Christopher A. Thom

  8. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Thomas Breithaupt & David Wallis

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Contributions

A.J.C. and D.L.G. conceived of the study. All authors helped to conduct the experiments. K.M.K., L.N.H. and A.J.C. wrote the code for processing the experiment data. A.J.C. performed all the data processing, analysis and modelling. A.J.C. wrote the paper, with review and editing provided by all authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrew J. Cross.

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Nature Geoscience thanks Julien Gasc and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: Alison Hunt, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Extended data

Extended Data Table 1 Experiment run conditions
Full size table

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–11, Tables 1–3 and Text 1–4.

Supplementary Data 1

Mechanical data.

Supplementary Code 1

Slab model code.

Supplementary Video 1

Movie of experiment San467.

Supplementary Video 2

Movie of experiment San471.

Supplementary Video 3

Movie of experiment San506.

Supplementary Video 4

Movie of experiment San537.

Supplementary Video 5

Movie of experiment San538.

Supplementary Video 6

Movie of experiment San540.

Supplementary Video 7

Movie of experiment San552.

Supplementary Video 8

Movie of experiment San558.

Supplementary Video 9

Movie of experiment San568.

Supplementary Video 10

Movie of experiment San572.

Supplementary Video 11

Movie of experiment San574.

Supplementary Video 12

Movie of experiment San585.

Supplementary Video 13

Movie of experiment San588.

Supplementary Video 14

Movie of experiment San652.

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Cross, A.J., Goddard, R.M., Kumamoto, K.M. et al. Direct observations of transient weakening during phase transformations in quartz and olivine. Nat. Geosci. 18, 548–554 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01703-6

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