Design and Testing of a New Laser Heating Compatible Piezo-Driven Dynamic Diamond Anvil Cell

Piezo-driven dynamic diamond anvil cells (dDAC) are ideal for studies of transformation kinetics at high pressures due to their high compression rates and ability to prescribe arbitrary compression paths. In the past, they have generally been limited to room temperature. While laser heating with rapid compression using gas membranes is possible, piezo-driven compression enables greater flexibility in compression path and higher compression rates, leading to interest in the development of a laser heated dynamic diamond anvil cell (LH-dDAC). Most piezo-driven dDAC designs orient the piezo-actuators in series with the diamond anvils, resulting in an asymmetric cell design that conflicts with double-sided laser heating systems. We demonstrate a new dDAC design where the piezo-actuators are oriented parallel to the diamond anvils. Moving the piezo-actuators off axis both reduces the total length (and allows for a symmetric design which fits within the laser heating optics at Sector 16-ID-B (HPCAT) of the Advanced Photon Source. We demonstrate the new dDAC’s capability for simultaneous rapid pressure and temperature jumps. When paired with in situ time-resolved structural determination using X-ray diffraction and pyrometric temperature measurements, the new piezoelectrically driven LH-dDAC opens the door for kinetic studies of transformations that have been previously inaccessible.