Double-Diamond Anvil Creates Pressures Greater Than Earth's Inner Core

With that much pressure, unique compounds can form and materials change their chemical and physical properties.

By Rebecca Boyle Posted 10.24.2012 at 3:25 pm 6 Comments

Pressure Chamber Argonne National Laboratory

With a new megapressure environment, scientists will be able to replicate pressures one and a half times stronger than those found at the center of the Earth. The specialized anvil cell can create double the amount of pressure than anyone had previously demonstrated, an environment where new materials can be formed and where minerals behave very strangely.

Scientists at institutions in Chicago, Germany and Belgium used a super-powerful X-ray beam at the Argonne National Laboratory to do it. It uses a half-century-old technique, diamond anvil cells, by adding a set of micro-anvils. A diamond anvil cell uses two brilliant-cut diamonds, like the kind you would see in an engagement ring, but instead of a point at the bottom, they have flat surfaces. A sample goes between the two diamonds, which are then compressed together to create high pressures. The technique can create about 320 to 360 gigapascals, which is about 3 million times the atmospheric pressure found on Earth’s surface and about the pressure you would find at the core.

This new one builds on this technique by adding micro-anvils, about 10-20 microns in diameter, between the larger two quarter-carat diamonds. It’s an anvil inside an anvil. The secondary set is made from nanocrystal diamond “semi-balls,” according to Argonne Lab. They are stronger and less brittle than other diamond crystals, and they can create 640 GPa of pressure--six million times that of atmospheric pressure, and nearly double the pressure at the center of the Earth.

Using this anvil-within-an-anvil, scientists will be able to create huge amounts of static pressure, rather than relying on shockwaves to compress things further. That means a longer observation time to study what happens to the doubly compressed sample--and it could revolutionize high-pressure science, researchers say. This could improve studies of materials like iron, which could help explain how Earth coalesced. Observations with the new double anvil were published this week in Nature Communications.

[Argonne National Laboratory]

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6 Comments

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beefymclovin

10/24/12 at 6:52 pm

can i get some crystallized hydrogen now? i need it for my mad scientist projects...

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Frank Einstein

10/24/12 at 7:23 pm

Diamonds will create as much pressure on any man's wallet.

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TeslasDisciple

10/24/12 at 7:46 pm

Now here is a good way to make new substances!

Now if only we can increase the heat between the two of them, lemme just stick this little piece of coal in there, you know.. can't hurt any...

Three days later you have scientists asking for less funding but buying ten times the equipment...

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
Mark Twain

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laurenra7

10/25/12 at 12:25 am

It has been observed that male carbon, when subjected to intense female heat and pressure, can produce diamonds.

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Tony_Who

10/26/12 at 10:07 am

How do they know the pressure at the center of the Earth?

Thanks,
-Tony

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suggestivesimon

10/26/12 at 1:11 pm

@Tony_Who

Observation of seismic waves to determine the Earth's structure, and then using that structure to determine density. Knowledge of density and gravity then leads to pressure.

From Google:
"Like many of the concepts in geophysics, density distribution within the earth is being studied through indirect means. Of particular value is the study of seismic wave propagation. Transverse and longitudinal seismic waves (shear and compressional waves respectively) behave differently depending on the medium in which they travel. A distinguishing property of shear waves is that they cannot pass through liquids and gases, while compressional waves can. Experimental evidence shows that, up to a depth of some 2900 km, shear wave movements are observed; material in this region is apparently rigid enough to allow such movement. Beyond 2900 km depth, no shear wave movements are observed, leading to a hypothesis that space beyond the 2900 km depth is filled with liquid. There is a fair amount of certainty that this liquid region is composed primarily iron, which is by far the most common of the dense materials on earth. Because of the immense pressures created by gravitational forces, the earth's core could have been squeezed to a solid, but high temperatures (roughly 2000 °C, according to one estimate) probably melted the iron.

Results of the study of seismic wave propagation in the form of density distribution yielded a hypothetical pressure distribution model of the earth's interior. At the centre, the pressure is about 380 GPa (380,000,000,000 pascal)."

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