Formation of diamonds in laser-compressed hydrocarbons at planetary interior conditions

The effects of hydrocarbon dissociation and subsequent diamond precipitation on the internal structure and evolution of icy giant planets like Neptune and Uranus have been discussed for more than three decades. Inside these celestial bodies, gravity compresses mixtures of light elements to densities of several grams per cubic centimeter while the temperature reaches thousands of Kelvins resulting in thermal energies on the order of chemical bonding and above.
Under these conditions, simple hydrocarbons like methane, which are highly abundant in the atmospheres of these planets, are believed to undergo structural transitions that release molecular hydrogen from deeper layers and may lead to compact stratified cores. Indeed, the isentropes of Uranus and Neptune intersect temperature-pressure conditions where first polymerization occurs, and then, in deeper layers, a phase separation into diamond and hydrogen may be possible.
Here we show experimental evidence for this phase separation process obtained by in situ X-ray diffraction from polystyrene samples dynamically compressed to 150GPa and 5000 K, which resembles the environment ~10,000 km below the surfaces of Neptune and Uranus. Our findings demonstrate the necessity of high pressures for initiating carbon-hydrogen demixing and imply that diamond precipitation may require ~10x higher pressures than previously suggested by experiments investigating non-isolated hydrocarbons. Besides underlining the general importance of chemical processes inside giant planets, these results will inform evolutionary models of Uranus and Neptune, where carbon-hydrogen demixing can be a significant source for the convection necessary to explain their unusual magnetic fields.
Additionally, our experiment demonstrates an alternative path for producing nanodiamonds for scientific and industrial applications that may be superior to current methods using oxygen-deficient explosives.