Studying the shallow part of the Earth's crust significantly contributes to human life. In the shallow crust, minerals react with the help of water and material moves by dissolution in water. Thus, experimental studies on the interaction between minerals and water at low temperatures (below 500 K) are important. However, these experiments have some problems. First, it is difficult to analyze the minerals synthesized at low temperatures, because they are fine-grained clay minerals or amorphous materials. However, recently developed analytical methods, such as NMR. EXAFS and Raman spectroscopy, may be used to analyze these materials. Second, because of the slow reaction rate at low temperatures, most synthesized materials are meta stable, and it is difficult to explain their stability thermodynamically. To explain the stability of the meta stable phase of silicate minerals, it is necessary to also consider the structure of synthesized minerals.
