The diamond-anvil pressure cell, in which two gem-quality diamonds apply a force to the sample, revolutionized high-pressure research. The diamond-anvil cell was invented in 1958 almost simultaneously by workers at the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology) in Washington, D.C., and at the University of Chicago. The diamond-cell design represented a logical outgrowth of Bridgman’s simple squeezer, but it had one significant advantage over all other high-pressure apparatuses. Diamond, while extremely strong, is also transparent to many kinds of electromagnetic radiation, including gamma rays, X-rays, visible light, and much of the infrared and ultraviolet region. The diamond cell thus provided the first opportunity for high-pressure researchers to observe visually the effects of pressure, and it allowed convenient access for many kinds of experimental techniques, notably X-ray diffraction, Mössbauer (gamma-ray), infrared, and Raman spectroscopies, and other optical spectroscopies.

The utility of the diamond cell was greatly enhanced when Alvin Van Valkenburg, one of the original diamond-cell inventors at the National Bureau of Standards, placed a thin metal foil gasket between the two diamond-anvil faces. Liquids and other fluid samples could thus be confined in a sample chamber defined by the cylindrical gasket wall and flat diamond ends. In 1963 Van Valkenburg became the first person to observe water, alcohol, and other liquids crystallize at high pressure. The gasketed geometry also permitted for the first time X-ray and optical studies of uncrushed single crystals that were hydrostatically pressurized by a fluid medium.

The diamond-anvil cell holds all records for sustained high pressures. The 100 GPa (megabar) mark was surpassed in December 1975 by the geophysicists Ho-kwang Mao and Peter M. Bell, both of the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, in Washington, D.C., where they subsequently attained diamond-cell pressures of approximately 300 GPa. Heating of diamond-cell samples, with both resistance heaters and lasers, has extended accessible pressure-temperature conditions to those that prevail in most of the solid Earth.

The highest transient laboratory pressures are generated with high-velocity projectiles that induce extreme shock pressures (which often reach many millions of atmospheres) for times on the order of one microsecond. Shock waves generated by explosions or gas-propelled projectiles induce dramatic changes in physical properties, as well as rapid polymorphic transformations. Carefully timed intense pulses of X-rays or laser light can be used to probe these transient environments. While dynamic high-pressure studies are limited by the difficulty of making precise measurements in such short time periods, these shock techniques have provided insights into changes in atomic structure and properties that occur at extreme conditions. Explosive shock compression has also become an important tool for the synthesis of microcrystalline diamond, which is employed in the polishing of gemstones and other hard materials.

Phase transitions

Under sufficiently high pressure, every material is expected to undergo structural transformations to denser, more closely packed atomic arrangements. At room temperature, for example, all gases solidify at pressures not greater than about 15 GPa. Molecular solids like water ice (H₂O) and carbon tetrachloride (CCl₄) often undergo a series of structural transitions, characterized by successively denser arrangements of molecular units.

A different transition mode is observed in oxides, silicates, and other types of ionic compounds that comprise most rock-forming minerals. In these materials, metal or semimetal atoms such as magnesium (Mg) or silicon (Si) are surrounded by regular tetrahedral or octahedral arrangements of four or six oxygen (O) atoms, respectively. High-pressure phase transitions of such minerals often involve a structural rearrangement that increases the number of oxygen atoms around each central cation. The common mineral quartz (SiO₂), for example, contains four-coordinated silicon at low pressure, but it transforms to the dense stishovite form with six-coordinated silicon at about 8 GPa. Similarly, the pyroxene mineral with formula MgSiO₃ at room pressure contains magnesium and silicon in six- and four-coordination, respectively, but the pyroxene transforms to the perovskite structure with eight-coordinated magnesium and six-coordinated silicon above 25 GPa. Each of these high-pressure phase transitions results in a denser structure with increased packing efficiency of atoms.

The British scientist J.D. Bernal predicted in 1928 that all matter should ultimately become metallic at sufficient pressure, as the forced overlap of electron orbitals induces electron delocalization. High-pressure transformations from insulator to metal were first observed in iodine, silicon, germanium, and other elements by the American chemist Harry G. Drickamer and his coworkers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the early 1960s. Subsequently, metallization has been documented in several more elements (including the gases xenon and oxygen), as well as in numerous molecular, ionic, and covalent chemical compounds. In 1996 William J. Nellis, an experimental physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, formed metallized hydrogen at a pressure of about 1.4 million atmospheres and temperatures above 3,700 °C.