Learning from the past: rare ε-Fe2O3 in the ancient black-glazed Jian (Tenmoku) wares

Catherine Dejoie; Philippe Sciau; Weidong Li; Laure Noé; Apurva Mehta; Kai Chen; Hongjie Luo; Martin Kunz; Nobumichi Tamura; Zhi Liu

doi:10.1038/srep04941

Learning from the past: rare ε-Fe2O3 in the ancient black-glazed Jian (Tenmoku) wares

Sci Rep. 2014 May 13:4:4941. doi: 10.1038/srep04941.

Authors

Catherine Dejoie¹, Philippe Sciau², Weidong Li³, Laure Noé⁴, Apurva Mehta⁵, Kai Chen⁶, Hongjie Luo⁷, Martin Kunz⁸, Nobumichi Tamura⁸, Zhi Liu⁹

Affiliations

¹ 1] ETH Zurich, Laboratory of Crystallography, CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland [2] Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA [3].
² 1] CEMES, CNRS, Université de Toulouse, 31055 Toulouse, France [2].
³ Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China.
⁴ CEMES, CNRS, Université de Toulouse, 31055 Toulouse, France.
⁵ Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA.
⁶ 1] Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA [2] Center for Advancing Materials Performance from the Nanoscale, State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, P. R. China.
⁷ Shanghai University, Shanghai 200436, China.
⁸ Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
⁹ 1] Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA [2] Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of sciences, Shanghai 200050, China.

Abstract

Ancient Jian wares are famous for their lustrous black glaze that exhibits unique colored patterns. Some striking examples include the brownish colored "Hare's Fur" (HF) strips and the silvery "Oil Spot" (OS) patterns. Herein, we investigated the glaze surface of HF and OS samples using a variety of characterization methods. Contrary to the commonly accepted theory, we identified the presence of ε-Fe2O3, a rare metastable polymorph of Fe2O3 with unique magnetic properties, in both HF and OS samples. We found that surface crystals of OS samples are up to several micrometers in size and exclusively made of ε-Fe2O3. Interestingly, these ε-Fe2O3 crystals on the OS sample surface are organized in a periodic two dimensional fashion. These results shed new lights on the actual mechanisms and kinetics of polymorphous transitions of Fe2O3. Deciphering technologies behind the fabrication of ancient Jian wares can thus potentially help researchers improve the ε-Fe2O3 synthesis.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.