New instrumentation for high-pressure single crystal diffraction at ISIS

The newly installed. much-improved single-crystal diffractometer, SXD at ISIS, received its first neutrons in May 2001. The detector area now covers slightly more than 2pi steradians in solid angle. High-pressure research using single crystals is becoming an increasingly important part of the user programme and thus, efforts are underway to provide a new sample environment as well as state-of-the-art data analysis software to open new opportunities in high-pressure single-crystal diffraction. Recently, a new gas-pressure cell with pressures up to 0.5 GPa has been successfully commissioned. First results from a series of molecular compounds containing short hydrogen bonds are presented. More recent developments at ISIS include a sapphire anvil cell for pressures up to 8 GPa, which has been successfully tested on the GEM powder diffractometer. It will shortly also be tested on SXD, as well as a modified Paris-Edinburgh cell to take 5-15 mm(3) single-crystal samples to pressures of more than 10 GPa.