Commission on High Pressure

Triennial Report 2005 of the IUCr Commission on High Pressure

The third triennium for the Commission on High Pressure started with some important changes in its membership. Most prominently, Richard Nelmes, the ‘spiritus rector’ and driving force of the Commission stepped down as Chair and was replaced by Martin Kunz (then Switzerland, now USA). Furthermore, Sarah Tolbert (USA), Roland Winter (Germany), John Loveday (UK), John Tse (Canada), Mohammed Mezouar (France) and Nom Hamaya (Japan) were newly elected to the commission. Andrzej Katrusiak (Poland) and S.K. Sikka (India) as well as the outgoing Chair Richard Nelmes were appointed as new consultants to the Commission.

The past three years have brought further development in high-pressure crystallography. On one hand, established high-pressure techniques are applied in new fields such as protein crystallography or nano-materials science, on the other hand, high-pressure crystallography is newly combined with experimental methods (e.g. inelastic scattering, small angle scattering, X-ray spectroscopy and X-ray radiography), which opens new possibilities to solve problems in a variety of disciplines. At the same time, the continuing development of established techniques allows the application of high-pressure crystallography to more and more sophisticated problems. This development is strongly supported by the expansion and perfection of dedicated high-pressure experimental stations at synchrotron- and neutron sources all over the world. Tremendous progress in computational techniques continues to strongly support or even lead the way in the structural exploration of matter at extreme conditions.

In order to support interaction between the individuals in the broad field of high-pressure crystallography, the main activity of the Commission in the past three years was the organization of symposia, workshops and a summer school. These events are also used as a forum, which should allow outsiders to learn about the potential, which high-pressure crystallography could offer for their research. We also put a specific effort on supporting young scientists in order to encourage them for a continuation of their career in science.


Symposia, workshops and summer school

During the Geneva Congress, the Commission organized six microsymposia, which were all well attended. These six microsymposia were complemented by two open Commission meetings focusing on technical development and application of high-pressure in protein crystallography.

Following this large event in 2002, a more focused workshop entitled “Non-ambient Crystallography: The Science of Change” was organized in 2003 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, by Simon Clark (LBL), Abby Kavner (UCLA) and Commission member Sarah Tolbert (UCLA). In addition to a range of interesting micro-symposia (“anisotropy in P/T deformations”, “kinetics of structural change”, “theory of structure under pressure”, “transport under pressure”, “phase transitions”, “synthesis at high pressure”) this workshop also offered four hands-on introductory courses on “high-pressure infra-red spectroscopy”, “high-pressure powder diffraction”, “laser-heated diamond anvil cells” and “general alignment and maintenance of diamond anvil cells”. These hands-on courses were especially appreciated by the 20 students, who benefited from the IUCr travel-support.

The year 2003 also saw the very successful realization of the first high-pressure crystallography summer school, hold between June 4th and June 15th in Erice, Sicily. Commission Consultant Andrzej Katrusiak (Poland) acted as course director together with Paul McMillan (UK). 30 international experts held lectures and workshops on practical aspects of both, experimental and computational work in high-pressure crystallography. 88 selected participants from 21 countries were on site for the summer school. They were joined by numerous ‘virtual’ participants, who made use of the first live broadcast of the Erice summer school via the Internet and were able to pose questions to the speakers through a web-chat-room.

In 2004, the Commission held a workshop covering the full scope of its activities at the Canadian Light Source in Saskatoon between August 18th and August 21st. Commission member John Tse coordinated the organization and chaired the program committee. The scientific program covered many scientific and technological areas of interest to the high-pressure community. The Workshop was arranged into 11 sessions over three and a half days. Each session focused on a particular subject and was led by a keynote lecture introducing the state-of-the-art of the field. There were a total of 47 oral presentations covering diverse topical subjects such as structural studies on biological materials, liquid-liquid transition, amorphous solids, structural chemistry of novel materials and structures, superconductivity and magnetism, computational crystallography and the latest development in instrumentation and methodologies for structural determination. A large portion of the presentations was given by young scientists (10 lectures by recent post-doctorals and students). In addition to formal presentations, a poster session with 22 contributions provided an alternative forum for further scientific discussions.

Like in previous General Assemblies, the Commission puts a lot of effort into shaping the program at the Florence Congress. Commission member John Parise is a member of the Program Committee. He was instrumental in planning six microsymposia organized by the high-pressure Commission. On top of these six microsymposia, Commission members John Loveday and Igor Goncharenko organize two open commission meetings, focusing on high-pressure single-crystal crystallography and technical developments. This together with two keynote lectures (John Tse, and Malcolm McMahon) will form a well-rounded high-pressure ‘workshop’ within the General Assembly.

Commission meetings

The main meeting of this triennium was held during the 2004 workshop in Saskatoon. Six members and consultants were present. Topics discussed were the creation of a high-pressure specific cif-code, the shaping of the Florence General Congress, possible sites of future Commission workshops as well as the maintaining of the Commission web-page.

Future plans and activities

The upcoming triennium is very promising for the high-pressure crystallography community. Recent progress in the artificial growth of diamonds and the upcoming dedicated high-pressure beamline at the newly constructed Spallation Neutron Source in Oak Ridge, together with new or improved dedicated high-pressure synchrotron beamlines will open an array of new experiments. Especially interesting for crystallographers is also the newly revived interest in high-pressure single-crystal diffraction, which may enable to extract detailed structural information experimentally at mega-bar pressures
The Commission plans more of its workshops in the years 2006 and 2007. In order to help expanding the high-pressure community into Eastern Europe, it was decided to hold the 2006 workshop in Dubna Russia, where we obtained support from the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research. The 2007 workshop is planned to be held at the Diamond Synchrotron Source in the UK. Commission member John Loveday will act as the local organizer. Also, first steps have been undertaken to organize a Commission workshop in 2009 in China, again with the aim to reach out to less represented countries.


These pages are maintained by the Commission Last updated: 15 Oct 2021