Ab initio-assisted assessment of the CaO-SiO2 system under pressure

We present the results of an ab initio-assisted assessment of melting and subsolidus phase relations in the system CaO-SiO2 up to high pressure conditions. All solid compounds known to nucleate in the system have been treated as purely stoichiometric and the liquid resolved in the framework of a simple polymeric model. Mixing properties of the binary liquid phase are fully described by a single-parameter purely enthalpic chemical interaction plus a strain energy contribution. The latter is required to predict liquid immiscibility of SiO2-rich liquid compositions at ambient conditions and becomes irrelevant at P > 2 GPa. A detailed survey of thermodynamic properties of silica polymorphs and calcium oxide and silicates in a broad range of P-T conditions reveals quite controversial stability relations and melting behavior. First-principles calculations on CaO and SiO2 pure liquid components and solid phases (lime and stishovite) have been used, along with a sound assessment of first- and second-order phase transitions, to reconcile thermochemical data with topological details of the observed phase diagrams. A physically-consistent coupling between thermodynamic and thermoelastic properties (viz. compressibility and thermal expansion) turns out to be of fundamental importance to infer reliable stability relations both at subsolidus and melting conditions. Pressure effects shift the composition of the main invariant points in the CaO-SiO2 system and also change the melting behavior of the CaSiO3 metasilicate in a complex manner.