High Pressure Equipment

The diamond anvil cells (DACs) that can be requested by users for use on ID27 are managed by the Sample Environment Support Service (SESS). All are BETSA-type membrane DACs of which:

• 14 cells for normal use (material: Marval18),
• 6 cells for Low Temperature (material: CuNi₂Be),
• 6 cells for High Temperature (material: Pyrad53NW),
• 1 panoramic cell (material: Marval).

See the SESS main page for further information on each type of DAC. For all cells working pressure depends on diamond culet sizes installed.

All requests for the reservation of SESS-HP DACs need to be made by mail (jeroen.jacobs@esrf.fr), at least 8 weeks prior to the start of your experiment (HT-DAC at least 3 months).

In your reservation mail the following information needs to be mentioned:

• The experiment reference (e.g. ES-###)
• The beamline and the name of your local contact (in cc:)
• The maximum pressure required
• The working temperature
• The material of your gasket
• If Gas Loading is required on-site

You will receive a confirmation mail from the ESRF Equipment Pool Application as soon as the reservation has been made.

Users are reminded that they are responsible for the equipment on loan for the duration of the experiment, in particular reimbursement for broken diamonds will be required if the DAC is misused.

The Paris-Edinburgh press is one of the major ID27 instruments and represents approximately 20% of beamtime activity. The VX5 Paris-Edinburgh press can generate stable pressures up to 15 GPa and temperatures up to 2200 K on several mm³ of sample volume. This device is complementary to the diamond anvil cell due to its larger sample volume and its wide accessible temperature range.

Undoubtedly the improvement in quality of data produced by users of the Paris-Edinburgh facility stems directly from the development of the oscillating slit system (Soller slits), also called multichannel collimator (MCC), that allows for almost complete elimination of scattering signals from sample environment in 2D data collections. This system is unique to ID27 and allowed in-house and external research to flourish in new directions, with novel study of liquids, glasses, by exploiting the ability to obtain new structure solutions and advanced data refinement techniques on samples under high pressure and temperature conditions.