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Formation of Iron-Helium Compounds under High Pressure

Haruki Takezawa ^1,*, Han Hsu ^2,†, Kei Hirose ^1,3,‡, Fumiya Sakai ¹, Suyu Fu ¹, Hitoshi Gomi ³, Shiro Miwa⁴, and Naoya Sakamoto⁴

¹Department of Earth and Planetary Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
²Department of Physics, National Central University, Taoyuan City 320317, Taiwan
³Earth-Life Science Institute, Institute of Science Tokyo, Tokyo 152-8550, Japan
⁴Institute for Integrated Innovations, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido 001-0021, Japan

^*Contact author: takezawa@eps.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp
^†Contact author: hanhsu@ncu.edu.tw
^‡Contact author: kei@eps.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 084101 – Published 25 February, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.084101

Abstract

We report the formation of fcc and distorted hcp iron-helium compounds with $x$ in ${FeHe}_{x}$ up to 0.13 and 0.48, respectively, based on experiments at 5–54 GPa and $\sim 1000 - 2820 K$ . Upon releasing pressure under room temperature, these fcc and distorted hcp ${FeHe}_{x}$ were still observed by XRD and SIMS measurements. Our first-principles calculations indicate that fcc and hcp ${FeHe}_{x}$ , with helium atoms occupying the tetrahedral and trigonal-planar interstitial sites (instead of the octahedral sites), are dynamically stable throughout 0–50 GPa. These results support that the Earth’s core can be a large reservoir of primordial ${}^{3}{He}$ .

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synopsis

Iron–Helium Compounds Form Under Pressure

Published 25 February, 2025

Experiments show that iron’s crystal lattice expands to incorporate helium.

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