Synchrotron radiation and high pressure: new light on materials under extreme conditions

J. Synchrotron Rad. (2005). 12, 135–154

Recent diamond-anvil cell experiments using new synchrotron X-ray and infrared techniques are revealing a wealth of phenomena in materials up to multimegabar pressures. Significant advances have occurred in high-pressure powder and single-crystal diffraction, spectroscopy, inelastic scattering, radiography, and infrared spectroscopy of simple molecular systems such as hydrogen, novel high-pressure metals and superconductors, high-density minerals, glasses and liquids, as well as biomolecules under extreme conditions. As such, the findings have implications for problems that span physics, chemistry, materials science, geoscience, planetary science, and biology.

R. J. Hemley, H.-K. Mao and V. V. Struzhkin