Structural Characterization of Aurophilic Gold(I) Iodide under High Pressure

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Inorganic Chemistry, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.inorgchem.9b00433.[EN] The effects of pressure on the crystal structure of aurophilic tetragonal gold iodide have been studied by means of powder X-ray diffraction up to 13.5 GPa. We found evidence of the onset of a phase transition at 1.5 GPa that is more significant from 3.8 GPa. The low- and high-pressure phases coexist up to 10.7 GPa. Beyond 10.7 GPa, an irreversible process of amorphization takes place. We determined the axial and bulk compressibility of the ambient-pressure tetragonal phase of gold iodide up to 3.3 GPa. This is extremely compressible with a bulk modulus of 18.1(8) GPa, being as soft as a rare gas, molecular solids, or organometallic compounds. Moreover, its response to pressure is anisotropic.The authors are thankful for the financial support of the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades, the Spanish Research Agency (AEI), and the European Fund for Regional Development (FEDER) under Grant MAT2016-75586-C4-1/2-P and of Generalitat Valenciana under Grant Prometeo/2018/123 (EFIMAT). J.A.S. acknowledges the "Ramon y Cajal" fellowship program (RYC-2015-17482) and Spanish Mineco Project FIS2017-83295-P. V.M. acknowledges the "Juan de la Cierva" program (FJCI-2016-27921) for financial support. Experiments were performed at the Materials Science and Powder Diffraction beamline of ALBA Synchrotron. The authors are thankful for the collaboration of ALBA staff and also thank D. Santamaria-Perez for fruitful discussions.Monteseguro, V.; Errandonea, D.; Achary, SN.; Sans-Tresserras, JÁ.; Manjón, F.; Gallego-Parra, S.; Popescu, C. (2019). Structural Characterization of Aurophilic Gold(I) Iodide under High Pressure. Inorganic Chemistry. 58(16):10665-10670. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.inorgchem.9b004331066510670581