High-pressure evolution of Fe[subscript 2]O[subscript 3] electronic structure revealed by x-ray absorption

We report the first high pressure measurement of the Fe K-edge in hematite (Fe{sub 2}O{sub 3}) by X-ray absorption spectroscopy in partial fluorescence yield geometry. The pressure-induced evolution of the electronic structure as Fe{sub 2}O{sub 3} transforms from a high-spin insulator to a low-spin metal is reflected in the x-ray absorption pre-edge. The crystal field splitting energy was found to increase monotonically with pressure up to 48 GPa, above which a series of phase transitions occur. Atomic multiplet, cluster diagonalization, and density-functional calculations were performed to simulate the pre-edge absorption spectra, showing good qualitative agreement with the measurements. The mechanism for the pressure-induced phase transitions of Fe{sub 2}O{sub 3} is discussed and it is shown that ligand hybridization significantly reduces the critical high-spin/low-spin gap pressure.