Dynamic Shock Wave-Induced Amorphous-to-Crystalline Switchable Phase Transition of Lithium Sulfate

• Published in: Journal of physical chemistry. C Vol. 126; no. 6; pp. 3194 - 3201
• Main Authors: Sivakumar, A, Jude Dhas, S. Sahaya, Chakraborty, Shubhadip, Kumar, Raju Suresh, Almansour, Abdulrahman I, Arumugam, Natarajan, Dhas, S. A. Martin Britto
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Chemical Society 17.02.2022
• Subjects: C: Physical Properties of Materials and Interfaces; Condensed Matter; Materials Science; Physics
• ISSN: 1932-7447; 1932-7455
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.1c09411

In recent years, there have been significant efforts made by materials science researchers to search for new phase-change materials, especially those possessing the caliber of influencing switchable phase changes, i.e., crystal–crystal and crystal–amorphous changes. Phase-change materials of such kind have attracted tremendous demand for technologically important applications, such as current resistive memories and thermal energy storage. In the present article, the switchable amorphous–glassy–crystalline–amorphous phase transitions occurring in the samples of lithium sulfate have been systematically experimented and demonstrated at dynamic shock wave-loaded conditions of various counts of shock pulses. The shocked samples have been evaluated using powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), ultraviolet–visible (UV–vis) spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy. The shock wave-induced orientational order–disorder of the SO4 tetrahedron and the positional disorders of the lithium atoms led to the observed switchable phase transitions with respect to the number of shock pulses.