Experimental and thermodynamic study of the crystallization of diamond and silicates in a metal-silicate-carbon system

Silicate inclusions are widespread in natural diamonds, which also may contain rare inclusions of native iron. This suggests that some natural diamonds crystallized in metal-silicate-carbon systems. We experimentally studied the crystallization of diamond and silicate phases from the starting composition Fe_0.36Ni_0.64 + silicate glass + graphite and calculated the Fe mole fractions of the silicate phases crystallizing under these conditions. The silicates synthesized together with diamond had low Fe mole fractions Fe/(Fe + Mg + Ca)] in spite of strong Fe predominance in the system. The Fe mole fractions of the silicates decreased in the sequence garnet-pyroxene-olivine, which is consistent with the results of our thermodynamic calculations. The Fe mole fraction of silicates under various redox conditions under which metal-carbon melts are stable drastically decreases with decreasing fo₂. The low Fe mole fractions of silicate inclusions in diamond from the Earth’s mantle can be explained by the highly reducing crystallization conditions, under which Fe was concentrated as a metallic phase of the magmatic melts and could be only insignificantly incorporated in the structures of silicates.