CO₂ laser-heated diamond-anvil cell methodology revisited

A description is given of CO₂ laser heating system for attaining high temperatures at pressure in a diamond-anvil cell (DAC). The main purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that a relatively inexpensive set-up, perhaps affordable to many high-pressure laboratories, may be commissioned for laser-heated DAC experiments to achieve comparable extreme P-T conditions to those attained with more sophisticated stations documented in the literature. A novel idea of using the analogue output of a CCD camera to estimate the peak temperature and map the temperature distribution across the hot-spot has been tested. In an additional initial experiment on cubic zirconia (c-ZrO₂) we present evidence from a Raman characterization of the sample that temperatures exceeding 4000 K have been obtained at pressure in the DAC.