The liquid-liquid phase transition in silicon revealed by snapshots of valence electrons

The basis for the anomalies of water is still mysterious. Quite generally tetrahedrally coordinated systems, also silicon, show similar thermodynamic behavior but lack—like water—a thorough explanation. Proposed models—controversially discussed—explain the anomalies as a remainder of a first-order phase transition between high and low density liquid phases, buried deeply in the “no man’s land”—a part of the supercooled liquid region where rapid crystallization prohibits any experimental access. Other explanations doubt the existence of the phase transition and its first-order nature. Here, we provide experimental evidence for the first-order-phase transition in silicon. With ultrashort optical pulses of femtosecond duration we instantaneously heat the electronic system of silicon while the atomic structure as defined by the much heavier nuclear system remains initially unchanged. Only on a picosecond time scale the energy is transferred into the atomic lattice providing the energy to drive the phase transitions. With femtosecond X-ray pulses from FLASH, the free-electron laser at Hamburg, we follow the evolution of the valence electronic structure during this process. As the relevant phases are easily distinguishable in their electronic structure, we track how silicon melts into the low-density-liquid phase while a second phase transition into the high-density-liquid phase only occurs after the latent heat for the first-order phase transition has been transferred to the atomic structure. Proving the existence of the liquid-liquid phase transition in silicon, the hypothesized liquid-liquid scenario for water is strongly supported.