Crystal structure of meteoritic schreibersites: determination of absolute structure

Abstract

Minerals of the schreibersite–nickelphosphide series (Fe,Ni)₃P crystallize in the non-centrosymmetric space group $I\bar 4$. As a consequence, they can possess two different spatial arrangements of the constituting atoms within the unit cell, related by the inversion symmetry operation. Here, we present the crystal structure refinements from single crystal X-ray diffraction data for schreibersite grains from iron meteorites Acuña, Carlton, Hex River Mts. (three different crystals), Odessa (two different crystals), Sikhote Alin, and Toluca aiming for the determination of the absolute structure of the examined crystals. The crystals studied cover the composition range from ~58 mol% to ~80 mol% Fe₃P end-member. Unit-cell parameter a and volume of the unit cell V, as well as certain topological structural parameters tightly correlate with Fe₃P content. Unit-cell parameter c, on the other hand, does not show such strong correlation. Eight of the nine crystal structure refinements allowed unambiguous absolute structure assignment. The single crystal extracted from Toluca is, however, of poor quality and consequently the structure refinement did not provide as good results as the rest of the materials. Also, this crystal has only weak inversion distinguishing power to provide unequivocal absolute structure determination. Six of the eight unambiguous absolute structure determinations indicated inverted atomic arrangement compared to that reported in earlier structure refinements (here called standard). Only two grains, one taken from Odessa iron and the other from the Hex River Mts. meteorite, reveal the dominance of standard crystal structure setting.