Due to the limited spatial resolution of the IR beam it is not possible to determine the concentration of hydrogen in the sanidine directly at the contact to the surrounding media. The first measurement point was typically 50 µm away from the surface and represents the average concentration over a range of 50 ± 30 µm. The measured profiles can be explained by a remaining hydrogen content in the surface area of the sanidine as well as by a very strong decrease of the concentration near the surface. Both approaches are discussed in following.
Profile evaluation assuming constant diffusivity
In the first approach, the absorbance-distance profiles were evaluated by the model of one-dimensional diffusion between an infinite reservoir (the gas phase) and a semi-infinite medium (the crystal) with the boundary condition of a constant surface concentration. Since the absorbance of the OH stretching vibration band is proportional to concentration of hydrogen, the measured absorbance can be directly used for the determination of the diffusion coefficient. Assuming a constant diffusion coefficient DH, the solution of Fick's second law for these boundary conditions is (Crank 1975)
$$\frac{A-{A}_{center}}{{A}_{surface}-{A}_{center}}=1-e rf\left(\frac{x}{\sqrt{4\bullet {D}_{H}\bullet t}}\right)$$
1
where t is the run duration, A is the absorbance at the distance x from the surface, Acenter and Asurface are absorbances in the center and at the surface, respectively. The term DH characterizes the chemical diffusion of hydrogen during dehydrogenation. The measured profiles were fitted to Eq. 1 with Asurface, Acenter and DH being adjustable parameter. The fitted curves are shown as solid lines in Fig. 1a,b and fit results are also included in the electronic supplement. For all profiles, the correlation coefficient r2 of the fit was > 0.95, in many cases even > 0.99. This could be regarded as a good confirmation of the evaluation approach.
A unique feature of all experiments is that the fit curves do not pass through the origin, i.e. some hydrogen remained in the crystal at the contact to alkali chloride. The relative abundance of hydrogen at the surface, expressed by the absorbance ration Asurface/Acenter, varies between 0.06 and 0.71. There is a rough trend of decreasing surface concentration of hydrogen with increasing temperature (Fig. 3). However, the scatter of the data is high, and the correlation coefficient is small (r2 = 0.45). One reason for the variation in Asurface/Acenter is that the water pressure (pH2O) in the experiments was low but it was not fixed at constant value. Another reason is some variation in the hydrogen concentration in the center of the sample between 81 and 115 ppm (see supplement). The trend of Asurface/Acenter with temperature is consistent with the structural interpretation of the type IIb OH defects in sanidine proposed in Behrens (2021a,b). Accordingly, this defect consists of a proton on an interstitial site compensating the charge deficiency of a nearby Al3+. Replacing the proton by a larger alkali requires energy for local expansion of the feldspar structure and, hence, substitution of hydrogen by alkali is a thermally activated process.
Boltzmann-Matano (BM) analysis
In the second approach it is assumed that the hydrogen content drops to zero at the surface during dehydrogenation. The strong decrease in hydrogen content towards the surface can be explained by a concentration-dependent diffusion coefficient. The method of Boltzmann (1894) and Matano (1932) allows determining the diffusion coefficient for each concentration along a diffusion profile. For sorption and desorption profiles the following equation can be used (Crank 1975)
$$D\left(C{\prime }\right)=-\frac{1}{2t}\cdot \frac{1}{{\left(\frac{dC}{dx}\right)}_{C{\prime }}}{\int }_{C{\prime }}^{1}xdC$$
2
where t is the time, C is the normalized concentration at the distance x from the surface, and C’ is the normalized concentration for which the diffusivity is evaluated. Considering that the IR absorbance is proportional to the concentration, in the case of desorption the normalized concentration is defined as
$$C=\frac{{A}_{center} -A}{{A}_{center} -{A}_{surface}}$$
3
Thus, the normalized concentration varies between 1 at the surface (x = 0) and 0 at the end of the profile (x = ∞). It is more convenient to plot the concentration as a function of x (Behrens and Zhang 2009). Then Eq. (2) transforms to
$$D\left(x{\prime }\right)=-\frac{1}{2\bullet t\bullet {\left(dC/dx\right)}_{x{\prime }}}\cdot \left[{\int }_{x{\prime }}^{\infty }C\bullet dx+x{\prime }\bullet C\left({x}^{{\prime }}\right)\right]$$
4
Here x’ is the distance from the surface at which the normalized concentration equals C’. A graphical illustration of the evaluation method is given in Fig. 4. The dehydrogenation profiles in the sanidine can be fitted well with a polynomial Cnorm = 1 + a∙x + b∙x1.5 +c∙x2 + d∙x0.5 where a, b, c, d are specific fit parameters for each profile. This type of equation has been successfully used to determine the concentration dependence of water diffusivity in silicate melts after dehydration experiments (Behrens 2006, Behrens and Zhang 2009).
Polynomial fitting is shown for two experiments in Fig. (4b,c). An upper value of x must be defined, since a good fit cannot be obtained with the polynomial for x →∞. Artefacts easily occur in the BM method at low and at high concentrations when either slopes or integrals have high uncertainty. Therefore, only diffusion data for x ≥ 100 µm and Cnorm ≥ 0.1 are considered in following.
In Fig. 5 the diffusion coefficients obtained by BM analyses are plotted for the successful experiments. The general trend is an increase in diffusivity with increasing hydrogen concentration, expressed as A/Acenter. The curvature of the lines is not meaningful because it is strongly affected by imperfect polynomial fitting of the data. The increase in diffusion coefficients also supports the proposed defect model. The more protons have been replaced by alkalis, the greater the probability of a reverse reaction, i.e. migrating protons are bound locally again, reducing their overall mobility.
For both approaches, the temperature of diffusivity is well described by an Arrhenius law (Fig. 6a,b). Two selected values of c/ccenter, the diffusion coefficients are compared in Fig. 6b with the data of the first approach (constant diffusion coefficient) and the results of the D/H exchange experiments. The difference of diffusivities for c/ccenter = 0.9 and c/ccenter = 0.6 is about 0.25 log units, independent on temperature. The values for c/ccenter = 0.6 agree with the data obtained assuming constant proton diffusivity which demonstrates the consistency of both approaches. At first glance, it is surprising that diffusivities based on dehydrogenation for c/ccenter = 0.9 are higher by half a log unit compared to self-diffusivities of hydrogen determined by D/H exchange experiments with pre-annealed sanidines. Intuitively, one would expect the opposite, i.e., that due to the temporary binding to dehydrogenated type IIb OH defects, the mobility of the protons is reduced.
However, the hydrogen concentrations measured by IR spectroscopy at room temperature only represent the stationary defects, but do not give any information about the concentration of mobile species (Kronenberg et al. 1996). As outlined by Behrens (2021b), the mobile hydrogen species in sanidines pre-annealed at ambient pressure are most likely protons while at elevated water pressures H2O molecules can enter the feldspar structure and became the main transporter for hydrogen. The concentration of mobile protons (cH+) is probably much lower than that of the hydrogen species bound in the stationary type II OH defects (cOH,II). The diffusion coefficient DD/H based on the hydrogen isotope exchange of the stationary OH defects is determined by the concentration ratio of the mobile and stationary hydrogen defects and the diffusivity of the mobile species DH+:
$${D}_{D/H}=\frac{{c}_{OH;II}}{{c}_{{H}^{+}}}\bullet {D}_{{H}^{+}}$$
5
Assuming that DH+ is not significantly different for A/Acenter = 0.9 and A/Acenter = 1 (as adjusted in the pre-annealed sanidine), the difference between DH and DD/H simply reflects that finally 100% of the stationary OH defects are involved in isotope exchange, but only 10% in the dehydrogenation reaction at A/Acenter = 0.9. With increasing dehydrogenation, cH+ decreases due to the back reaction
$${Na}_{i}^{+}+{H}_{OH,II}^{+}={Na}_{OH,II}^{+}+{H}_{i}^{+}$$
6
where \({Na}_{OH,II}^{+}\) is a sodium ion replacing a localized proton \({H}_{OH,II}^{+}\) needed for local charge compensation of excess aluminum. \({Na}_{i}^{+}\)represents all kinds of sodium interstitials produced by the Frenkel equilibrium reaction
$${{Na}_{A}^{+}=Na}_{i}^{+}+{V}_{A}$$
7
Here, the subscripts A refer to regular alkali sites in the feldspar structure and V indicates a vacancy.
The higher DD/H in the natural sanidine compared to the pre-annealed sanidine is due to the presence of water molecules in the former one. These molecules act as transport vehicles for hydrogen isotopes which can easily exchange with hydrogen in stationary defects. The higher diffusion coefficients for oxygen under hydrothermal conditions compared to dry conditions (see Fig. 7) also argue for such a mechanism at elevated water pressures.
Temperature dependence of hydrogen diffusion
Arrhenius parameter for dehydrogenation of sanidine are given in Table 2. Within error, the activation energies are identical for both evaluation approaches and do not depend on the degree of dehydrogenation, at least at high hydrogen contents. The activation energies for dehydrogenation of sanidine agree well with those for D/H exchange in natural Eifel sanidine (160.2 kJ/mol), pre-annealed Eifel sanidine (159.9 kJ/mole) and adularia from unknown locality (162.3 kJ/mole) reported in Behrens (2021b). A similar value of 172 kJ/mole is given by Kronenberg et al. (1996) for the removal of hydrogen defects in adularia from Kristallina, Switzerland. Kronenberg et al. (1996) suggest that proton migration via interstitials is the transport mechanism for hydrogen in their experiments. However, this interpretation is controversial, see the discussion by Doremus (1998), Kronenberg et al. (1998) and Behrens (2021b).
Table 2
Arrhenius parameter for chemical diffusion of hydrogen in sanidine
| T range (°C) | n | log D0 | Ea |
| | | | | (D0 in m2/s) | (kJ/mol) |
Fit const. D | 605 | - | 1000 | 15 | -4.37 | ± | 0.30 | 168.3 | ± | 6.0 |
BM, c/ccenter = 0.9 | 605 | - | 1000 | 14 | -4.39 | ± | 0.48 | 162.4 | ± | 9.7 |
BM, c/ccenter = 0.6 | 720 | - | 1000 | 7 | -4.71 | ± | 0.30 | 161.0 | ± | 6.4 |
Notes. |
n = number of profiles |
BM: Boltzmann Matano evalution at two different relative concentrations of hydrogen. |
Much lower diffusivities at moderate temperatures and higher activation energies were found for dehydrogenation of andesine from Halloran Springs, California (Ea = 266–278 kJ/mole, Johnson and Rossman 2013) and Eifel sanidine in absence of alkali chloride (Ea ≈ 305 kJ/mole, Behrens 2021a), see Fig. 7. These findings point to a different mechanism for removal of hydrogen defects. If the substitution of protons by monovalent cations or the release of hydrogen after oxidation of neighboring ions such as Fe2+ is not possible, then oxygen must be additionally removed for charge compensation. This is associated with a strong perturbation of the crystal structure and thus requires high activation energies. In the case of alkali-free dehydration of sanidine, such a mechanism is supported by cracking during complete hydrogen removal induced by internal strain (Behrens 2021a).
On the other hand, the activation energy appears to be significantly lower for D/H exchange under hydrothermal conditions (130 kJ/mole at a water pressure of 2 kbar, Behrens (2021b)). On the other hand, from the higher diffusivities and the low activation energies under hydrothermal conditions, one cannot necessarily conclude that water molecules have a higher mobility than protons in the feldspar structure. As already mentioned, the exchange rate is determined not only by the mobility of the defects but also by their concentration. In isotope exchange experiments at 6–8 kbar, an increase in hydrogen content of more than 50% was observed in some cases by Behrens (2021b). The incorporated water has a very high mobility, as shown by the chemical diffusion coefficients for H2O determined from the sorption profiles (see Fig. 7, data 9).
In Fig. 7 the diffusion data for hydrogen species are compared to alkali diffusion data for Eifel sanidine. It is striking that 22Na tracer diffusion (Wilangowski et al. (2015) are very similar to DH values determined by dehydrogenation of Eifel sanidine in presence of alkali chloride, while 43K tracer diffusion coefficients (Hergemöller et al. (2017) are several orders of magnitude smaller. My experiments with different alkali chlorides give consistent results which shows that the external source of alkali is not rate-controlling for dehydrogenation. The short Na/K exchange profiles when using sodium chloride as the alkali source support this thesis. As discussed in my previous paper (Behrens 2021a), the strongly bound type OH II defects in the sanidine are likely protons incorporated on interstitial sites as a charge balance for excess aluminum. Replacement by alkalis requires energy, and the smaller sodium ions are preferred over the larger potassium ions. Accordingly, the diffusion out of hydrogen requires a corresponding counterflux of sodium. However, since in the annealed sanidine the Na concentration is about 30 times higher than the H concentration, the local charge balance could be rapidly established even with an order of magnitude slower Na diffusivity.