Diamond Anvil Cells

The Diamond Anvil Cell: principle

The general principal is as follows: a diamond is glued on a hard backing plate (usually made of tungsten carbide) and placed in metallic part called the piston. The second diamond also glued on a backing plate is placed in the counterpart called the cylinder. The piston slides in the cylinder to bring the two diamonds in contact. Small screws allows to align both diamond tips and also their parallelity. Finally a metallic gasket that contain the sample is placed between the two diamonds, and pressure is generated using either screws or a gas membrane to squeeze both diamond together and increase the pressure.