Abstract
Understanding the kinetics of phase transitions, including decomposition from reactants to products under extreme condition events is challenging. Capturing these processes require: 1) diagnostics that probe on the timescales and at energies capable of interacting with the dynamically evolving products, penetrating the opaqueness of the changing system; and 2) detectors sensitive enough to observe these events. Synchrotrons and free electron lasers provide ke-V-energy x-ray beams capable of penetrating the optical-opaqueness of the temporally evolving products. At the Dynamic Compression Sector at the Advanced Photon Source, the x-ray beam is coupled to single and two-stage gas guns capable of producing planar shocks at a range of projectile velocities while capturing in situ x-ray diffraction/scattering of the evolving material under dynamic compression. In this work, we demonstrate the utility of this approach in measuring the evolution of crystalline domains in shocked high-density polyethylene to P = 7.45 GPa, and have observed the compression and orientation of the polymer chains in real time.
