High-pressure phases of alumina

Alumina (Al2O3) has been widely used as a pressure standard in static diamond anvil cell experiments and is a major chemical component of the Earth. So a detailed knowledge of its high-pressure stability is of great importance in both materials science and deep Earth science. A phase transition is known to occur at roughly 80-100 GPa between corundum and the Rh2O3 (II) structure. A second phase transition to the CaIrO3 structure occurs at even higher pressures. Here we present a computational structure search to reveal three additional structures which are competitive at these pressures but hitherto unknown to be stable in high-pressure alumina.