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March 2026 ESRFnews

H

IGH - PRESSURE science matters more

than ever . Squeeze a material and its atoms

are forced into new arrangements . Chemical

bonds can flip ; magnetic and electric properties can

radically alter . By remaking matter in this way , scientists

can search for high - temperature superconductivity ,

metallic hydrogen and other quantum phenomena , or

find out which exotic phases really exist inside distant

planets

There are practical motivations too High pressure

experiments mimic processes that happen deep

underground including how carbon dioxide can become

locked into stable minerals They can also probe the

stability and performance of materials we rely on such

as industrial catalysts and environmentally friendly

refrigerants In some cases they can make altogether new

materials with outstanding properties materials that

might prove to be stable at ambient conditions for next

generation technologies

But high pressure science is far from straightforward

In a lab X ray sources are usually too weak for a sample

that ’ s tiny and buried inside a diamond anvil cell . And

even at a synchrotron , photons are only half the story :

without well - honed on - site support – cell preparation ,

alignment and metrology , specialist sample

environments , safety systems and rapid troubleshooting

– the work can become awkward , time - consuming and

hard to repeat . The ESRF , by contrast , has a suite of

instrumentation and support infrastructure to make

high pressure work as straightforward as possible

And the EBS is taking the science further pushing

experimental limits and turning measurements that

were barely possible into routine tools for discovery

A striking example of this came in 2022 two years

after the EBS upgrade when a team led by Leonid

Dubrovinsky at the University of Bayreuth in Germany

synthesised new materials at static terapascal pressures

around 600 and 900 gigapascals using a laser heated

double stage diamond anvil cell The breakthrough was

not only reaching those pressures but also solving crystal

structures in situ from microcrystals by mapping and

single crystal diffraction with a sub micron X ray beam

C R E D I T

Pushing the

limits

Armed with the EBS and a host of support facilities , the

ESRF is transforming high - pressure research .