¹Pierre-Marie Zanetta,^1,2Venkateswara Rao Manga,¹Yao-Jen Chang,²Tarunika Ramprasad,¹Juliane Weber,³John R. Beckett,^1,2Thomas J. Zega
American Mineralogist 108, 881-902 Link to Article [http://www.minsocam.org/msa/ammin/toc/2023/Abstracts/AM108P0881.pdf]
¹Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, U.S.A.
²Materials Science and Engineering, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, U.S.A.
³Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, U.S.A.
Copyright: The Mineralogical Society of America

Calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs) in chondritic meteorites are composed of refractory
minerals thought to be the first solids to have formed in the solar nebula. Among them, hibonite,
nominally CaAl12O19, holds particular interest because it can incorporate significant amounts of Ti
into its crystal structure in both Ti3+ and Ti4+ oxidation states. The relative amounts of these cations
that are incorporated reflect the redox conditions under which the grain formed or last equilibrated and
their measurement can provide insight into the thermodynamic landscape of the early solar nebula.
Here we develop a new method for the quantification of Ti oxidation states using electron energy-loss
spectroscopy (EELS) in an aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM)
to apply it to hibonite.
Using a series of Ti-bearing oxides, we find that the onset intensity of the Ti L2,3 edge decreases with
increasing Ti-oxidation state, which is corroborated by simulated Ti-oxide spectra using first-principles
density-functional theory. We test the relationship on a set of synthetic hibonite grains with known
Ti4+/ΣTi values and apply the developed method on a hibonite grain from a compact type A inclusion
in the Northwest Africa (NWA) 5028 CR2 carbonaceous chondrite. The STEM-EELS data show that
the chondritic hibonite grain is zoned with a Ti4+/ΣTi ratio ranging from 0.78 ± 0.04 to 0.93 ± 0.04
over a scale of 100 nm between the core and edge of the grain, respectively. The Ti substitution sites
are characterized by experimental and calculated high-angle annular-dark-field (HAADF) images and
atomic-level EEL spectrum imaging. Simulated HAADF images reveal that Ti is distributed between
the M2 and M4 sites while Mg sits on the M3 site. Quantitative energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy
shows that this grain is also zoned in Al and Ti. The Mg distribution is not well correlated with that
of Ti and Ti4+/ΣTi at the nanoscale.
The spatial decoupling of the element composition and Ti-oxidation states suggests a multistage
evolution for this hibonite grain. We hypothesize that Ti and Mg were incorporated into the structure
during condensation at high temperature through multiple reactions. Transient heating, presumably
in the solar nebula, adds complexity to the crystal chemistry and potentially redistributed Ti and Mg.
Concurrently, the formation of oxygen vacancies as a result of a reducing gas, led to the reduction of
Ti4+ to Ti3+. The multiple defect reactions occurring in this single hibonite crystal preclude a simple
relationship between the Ti4+/ΣTi and the fO2 of formation. However, moving forward, these measurements are fundamental inputs for modeling of the thermodynamic conditions under which hibonite
formed in the early solar nebula.