Structural and electronic transformations of GeSe ₂ glass under high pressures studied by X-ray absorption spectroscopy

Pressure-induced transformations in an archetypal chalcogenide glass (GeSe 2 ) have been investigated up to 157 GPa by X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Ge and Se K-edge XAS data allowed simultaneous tracking of the correlated local structural and electronic changes at both Ge and Se sites. Thanks to the simultaneous analysis of extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) signals of both edges, reliable quantitative information about the evolution of the first neighbor Ge-Se distribution could be obtained. It also allowed to account for contributions of the Ge-Ge and Se-Se bond distributions (chemical disorder). The low-density to high-density amorphous-amorphous transformation was found to occur within 10 to 30 GPa pressure range, but the conversion from tetrahedral to octahedral coordination of the Ge sites is completed above ∼ 80 GPa. No convincing evidence of another high-density amorphous state with coordination number larger than six was found within the investigated pressure range. The number of short Ge-Ge and Se-Se “wrong” bonds was found to increase upon pressurization. Experimental XAS results are confirmed by MD simulations, indicating the increase of chemical disorder under high pressure.