Diamond anvil cell, 50th birthday

Abstract

The year 2008 marked the fiftieth birthday of the diamond anvil cell. Its birth took place when Alvin Van Valkenburg, while working with his colleagues, Charles E. Weir, Ellis R. Lippincott, and Elmer N. Bunting, first realized that he could look right through one of the diamond anvils and see a sample while it was at high pressure. In the following years, these scientists and many others adapted the diamond anvil cell to a wide variety of analytical techniques that have provided an impressive amount of information about materials at high pressures and high temperatures. But, virtually all of those techniques start with looking into the diamond anvil cell.

Keywords:

• diamond anvil cell
• high pressure
• high temperature
• history

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Stefan Klotz, Editor in Chief of High Pressure Research, for inviting me to write this history of the diamond anvil cell and for providing valuable guidance in doing so. I am indebted to Robert Hazen for providing original photographs taken by Alvin Van Valkenburg. I especially want to thank Gasper Piermarini, who was there at NBS in the early days of diamond anvil cell development; he helped fill in some of the important details of the early history and provided several of the illustrations. Likewise, Eric Van Valkenburg provided some details and informed me that he now has the walnut desk Van used in his informal home lab. I am grateful to Stan Tozer and Richard Nelmes also for filling in some details and providing encouragement. I had many valuable comments and suggestions from friends and colleagues who read the manuscript. In addition to Robert Hazen, Gasper Piermarini, and Eric Van Valkenburg, they include Alan Anderson, I-Ming Chou, Robert Mayanovic, and Elise Skalwold.