Laser heated diamond anvil cell facility for high temperature high pressure research: application to material synthesis and melting studies

Laser-heated diamond anvil cell (LHDAC) technique is a unique and powerful experimental tool for studying the phase behaviour of materials at thermodynamic conditions comparable to the Earth's deep interior. Fine tuning of the two thermodynamic variables viz., pressure and temperature enables one to manipulate matter on an atomic scale leading to the synthesis of novel compounds or transformation of the properties of existing materials. In this article the details of an ytterbium doped fibre laser based LHDAC facility are presented. The advantages and excellent performance of the off-axis angular heating geometry is demonstrated through results of high pressure melting experiments on KBr up to 24GPa and high temperature high pressure synthesis of -Mo2N carried out by laser heating molybdenum metal and molecular nitrogen at 7GPa and 2000K in a Mao-Bell type diamond anvil cell.