Our new paper, “Carbonate stability in the reduced lower mantle,” is now live at Earth and Planetary Science Letters and will be printed in the May 1st issue! This work, conducted mostly at EPFL with a fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation, examines the effects of redox conditions, pressure and temperature on the breakdown of carbonates and formation of diamonds in Earth’s lower mantle. We use transmission electron microscopy on samples recovered from the laser-heated diamond anvil cell to show that metallic iron promotes breakdown of MgCO3 but that CaCO3 is preserved in contact with diamonds at conditions near those at the core-mantle boundary. Thanks to coauthors James Badro, Farhang Nabiei, Vitali Prakapenka, Marco Cantoni and Philippe Gillet!

Until April 27th, the article is openly available for free at this link!