Rock-salt and helix structures of silver iodides under ambient conditions

Abstract

Abstract Many different phase structures have been discovered for silver iodides. The β and γ phases were found to be the most common ones at ambient conditions, while the rock-salt phase was found to be stable under pressures between 400 MPa and 11.3 GPa. Recently, the α phase was demonstrated to be stable under ambient conditions when the particle sizes were reduced to below 10 nm. However, no other phase has been reported to be stable for silver iodides under ambient conditions. Rock-salt and helix structures have been found to be stable under ambient conditions in this study. The structures have been characterized by elemental mapping, Raman scattering, and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. The stabilities of these structures were also confirmed by molecular dynamics and density functional theory.