Solids chemical conversion waves

This chapter generalizes the results of the studies of traveling waves of chemical conversion observed by the authors in a wide variety of solids at liquid-nitrogen and -helium temperatures. 

A quite different set of dynamic high-pressure techniques are based on the use of chemical or nuclear explosions to produce transient shock waves of high peak pressure but short duration. With such methods, one can often penetrate the high-T, P regions where kinetic barriers become unimportant and a catalyst is unnecessary. However, the same kinetics that allows facile conversion of graphite to diamonds as the shock front arrives also allows the facile back-conversion as the shock wave passes. As a pioneer of shock-wave diamond synthesis remarked ruefully, We were millionaires for one microsecond [B. J. Alder and C. S. Christian. Phys. Rev. Lett. 7, 367 (1961) B. J. Alder, in W. Paul and D. M. Warschauer (eds). Solids under Pressure (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1963), p. 385]. 

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