Stishovite at Pressure
Ball and stick representation of the structure of SiO2, 22 Å across. Blue spheres
represent silicon atoms, red spheres are oxygen. Bonds are shown in green.
At pressures around 50 GPa, stishovite, SiO2, transforms to the calcium chloride structure.
This image shows how the atoms respond to pressure while going through the phase transition.
The calcium chloride structure of SiO2 has not been experimentally determined.
The structure used for this image was proposed by Teter et al (Phys Rev Lett 80 (1998) 2145-2148).
