Experimental investigation of the creep behavior of MgO at high pressures

The high-temperature rheological behavior of polycrystalline periclase, MgO, has been investigated using the deformation-DIA on a synchrotron beamline at pressures up to 10 GPa. Significant experimental scatter in stress measurement illustrates current limitations of this technique. Although temperature and stress sensitivities are not well constrained, there is a clear dependence of creep rate on pressure. Based on our results, the creep rate of MgO depends on confining pressure with an activation volume of V* ≈ 2.4 × 10−6 m3/mol. The grain-scale view of deformation processes reveals, as other D-DIA studies have, that subpopulations of grains, grouped by orientation, obey slightly different flow laws. The measurements also reveal that stress heterogeneity in the sample, whether caused by external conditions or processes internal to the sample itself, contribute a significant portion of the overall uncertainty in stress measurement.