Revisiting the I structures of high-temperature Ca-rich plagioclase feldspar – a single-crystal neutron and X-ray diffraction study

The structures of four natural Ca-rich plagioclase feldspars formed at high temperature were analysed using single-crystal neutron and X-ray diffraction. The neutron time-of-flight Laue diffractometer at the ORNL Spallation Neutron Source (Tennessee, USA) combined with a single-crystal X-ray diffraction instrument were able to reveal some new details about these already intensively studied structures. The split oxygen atoms refined from the neutron diffraction data show the underlying mechanism of Ca–Na ordering and the anisotropic ordering along the c-axis. The compositional ranges covered by the samples studied are quite rare for structures. The incommensurately modulated e2 structure of some plagioclase samples can easily be confused with an structure from the diffraction pattern, which puts some previously published structures into question. An incomplete phase diagram for Ca-rich plagioclase feldspar is proposed to explain the rarity of the structure in this compositional range, and a time–temperature–transformation diagram for the composition ∼An₆₆ is provided accordingly.