When researchers shock compress samples, they are essentially squeezing the material along one direction. In many materials, this normally leads to an irreversible deformation driven by the generation and diffusion of defects, tiny imperfections in the material’s atomic arrangement. The researchers found that rather than the accumulation of defects, silicon prefers to relax through the collective motion of its atoms and transformation into a high-pressure structure.
Silvia Pandolfi/Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
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