Abstract
The diamond-anvil cell (DAC) was invented 60 years ago, ushering in a new era for material sciences, extending research into the dimension of pressure. Most structural determinations and chemical research have been conducted at ambient pressure, i.e. the atmospheric pressure on Earth. However, modern experimental techniques are capable of generating pressure and temperature higher than those at the centre of Earth. Such extreme conditions can be used for obtaining unprecedented chemical compounds, but, most importantly, all fundamental phenomena can be viewed and understood from a broader perspective. This knowledge, in turn, is necessary for designing new generations of materials and applications, for example in the pharmaceutical industry or for obtaining super-hard materials. The high-pressure chambers in the DAC are already used for a considerable variety of experiments, such as chemical reactions, crystallizations, measurements of electric, dielectric and magnetic properties, transformations of biological materials as well as experiments on living tissue. Undoubtedly, more applications involving elevated pressure will follow. High-pressure methods become increasingly attractive, because they can reduce the sample volume and compress the intermolecular contacts to values unattainable by other methods, many times stronger than at low temperature. The compressed materials reveal new information about intermolecular interactions and new phases of single- and multi-component compounds can be obtained. At the same time, high-pressure techniques, and particularly those of X-ray diffraction using the DAC, have been considerably improved and many innovative developments implemented. Increasingly more equipment of in-house laboratories, as well as the instrumentation of beamlines at synchrotrons and thermal neutron sources are dedicated to high-pressure research.
Highlights
In the first decades of the 21st century, it is clear that high-pressure research is opening a new chapter in pure sciences and technologies
Owing to the progress in diamond-anvil cell (DAC) designs and in the auxiliary equipment of DACs, a steadily increasing amount of highpressure results is being published in scientific journals
It can be envisaged that the high-pressure results will continue to flow and will contribute to a more complete understanding of the fundamental and applied sciences. It appears that all the broadly understood material sciences can benefit from highpressure experiments
Summary
In the first decades of the 21st century, it is clear that high-pressure research is opening a new chapter in pure sciences and technologies. The number of high-pressure devices available in laboratories and large facilities has steadily increased and various types of high-pressure equipment – hydraulic press, belt, piston-and-cylinder, opposed anvils, DAC or laser-generated shock waves – are constantly being adapted to new types of experiments and new applications This progress in experimental equipment is matched by the development of adequate theoretical methods for predicting high-pressure phases (Price, 2018; Oganov, 2018; Oganov et al, 2011; Grochala et al, 2007; Neumann et al, 2015; Zurek & Bi, 2019). One article cannot cover the whole variety of high-pressure crystallographic experiments, the new designs of high-pressure equipment, computer programs for theoretical computations for high-pressure structures and for the interpretation of high-pressure data This perspective article focuses on selected aspects most relevant to crystal engineering and the research results changing the understanding of concepts in materials chemistry, undoubtedly biased by this author’s personal interests. References to highpressure effects can be found in the scientific literature on various subjects, ranging from pure sciences – such as thermodynamics, physics, chemistry and biology – to applied research and technologies – for example geology, astrophysics, 920 Andrzej Katrusiak Lab in a DAC super-hard materials, chemical processes, pharmacy (Coudert, 2015; Bezzu et al, 2019; Meyer et al, 2019; Zakharov et al, 2015; Moggach et al, 2008; Fabbiani & Pulham, 2006; Lee et al, 2014; McKellar & Moggach, 2015)
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