Incommensurate Structure of Phosphorus Phase IV

There are six known phases for phosphorus at room temperature under high pressure. Only the structure of phase IV, which exists from 107 GPa to 137 GPa, remains unsolved. We performed a powder x-ray diffraction experiment and a Rietveld analysis and successfully determined its structure to be an incommensurately modulated structure by only 1 site of atomic position. High-pressure phases of halogens and chalcogens have previously been shown to have a similar modulated structure; however, phosphorus phase IV is different from them and was shown to be the third case.