This award provides partial funding for the purchase of components and the assembling of a materials testing apparatus that will be operated and maintained in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Minnesota. The University of Minnesota is committed to providing the remaining funds required. The materials testing system will operate at high-pressure and high-temperature (up to 1700K and 7 kilobars of hydrostatic confining pressure). A variety of physical properties are to be investigated under the conditions attainable with this instrument. They include systematic studies of (1) plastic flow of crystalline and partially molten mantle rocks, (2) migration of melt in partially melted rocks and ceramics, (3) diffusion of water-derived species in silicates, (4) development of preferred orientation during deformation in simple shear, (5) the role of fluids in ductile deformation of crustal rocks, (6) the effect of pressure on diffusion and electrical conductivity in transition- metal oxides, (7) the effect of pressure on diffusion and on the kinetics of the amorphous-to-crystalline phase transformation in silicon, and (8) synthesis of zeolites.
