We report here high-pressure x-ray diffraction (XRD) studies on tellurium (Te) at room temperature up to 40 GPa in the diamond anvil cell (DAC). The XRD measurements clearly indicate a sequence of pressure-induced phase transitions with increasing pressure. The data obtained in the pressure range 1 bar to 40 GPa fit five different crystalline phases out of Te: hexagonal Te (I) → monoclinic Te(II) → orthorhombic Te (III) → Β-Po-type Te(IV) → body-centered-cubic Te(V) at 4, 6.2, 11 and 27 GPa, respectively. The volume changes across these transitions are 10%, 1.5%, 0.3% and 0.5%, respectively.

Self consistent electronic band structure calculations both for ambient and high pressure phases have been carried out using the tight binding linear muffin tin orbital (TB-LMTO) method within the atomic-sphere approximation (ASA). Reported here apart from the energy band calculations are the density of states (DOS), Fermi energy (E_f) at various high-pressure phases. Our calculations show that the ambient pressure hexagonal phase has a band gap of 0.42 eV whereas high-pressure phases are found to be metallic. We also found that the pressure induced semiconducting to metallic transition occurs at about 4 GPa which corresponds to the hexagonal phase to monoclinic phase transition. Equation of state and bulk modulus of different high-pressure phases have also been discussed.