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Drury & Fitz Gerald 1996
Drury, M.R. and Fitz Gerald, J.D. (1996). Grain boundary melt films in an experimentally deformed olivine-orthopyroxene rock: Implications for melt distribution in upper mantle rocks. Geophysical Research Letters 23: doi: 10.1029/96GL00702. issn: 0094-8276.

An unexpected microstructure, with important implications for melt distribution in the upper mantle, has been found in a 70% olivine +30% orthopyroxene rock experimentally deformed at 1500K, 300 MPa, where incipient partial melting occurred. As found in previous studies of comparable systems, most melt in the olivine-orthopyroxene sample resided in a network of grain-edge tubes and occasional thick (50--500 nm) layers. We infer, using electron microscopy at its highest resolution, that melt also existed in another form as glass films 1.0--1.5 nm thick, along all grain boundaries, with total film fraction (F) of 0.0002. All of these melts are unusually SiO2-rich. Further work is needed to confirm that the thin films are not transient, although their co-existence with smoothly curved solid-melt interfaces and flat crystal faces suggests they are stable. If thin high-silica melt films are stable they might influence physical properties and melt extraction processes in regions of incipient melting and metasomatism in the upper mantle. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1996

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Abstract

Keywords
Physical Properties of Rocks, Fracture and flow, Physical Properties of Rocks, Transport properties, Tectonophysics, Physics of magma and magma bodies, Tectonophysics, Rheology—general
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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