Melting of wüstite and iron up to pressures of 600 kbar

The effect of pressure on melting temperature of wüstite and iron has been measured with laser-heated diamond anvil cell. The temperature was determined by measuring the thermal radiation emitted by the sample as a function of wavelength in the range from 600 nm to 900 nm to which Planck's radiation function was fitted; the pressure was measured by ruby-fluorescence technique. The melting curve of wüstite in this study when extrapolated to low pressures agrees with Lindsley's (1966) data. Our data are similar to the recent data of Boehler (1992) and close to that of Ringwood and Hibberson (1990) at pressure of 160 kbar, but the melting temperature does not rise as rapidly with increasing pressure as reported by Knittle and Jeanloz (1991). If tungsten emissivity is used in the temperature calculation, the melting curve of iron matches those of Boehler et al. (1990). Use of emissivity of iron in the temperature calculation results in somewhat higher temperatures than those reported by Boehler et al. (1990).