Short piston-cylinder pressure cells based on Ni-Cr-Al cylinders and their application to fragile materials.

ABSTRACT

In this decade, the performance of piston-cylinder pressure cells has been drastically improved by using robust materials such as nickel-chromium-aluminum and cobalt-nickel-chromium-molybdenum alloys to construct the inner cylinders. In this article, we present several experimental techniques for carrying out resistivity measurements under high pressure by applying the piston-cylinder devices based on the nickel-chromium-aluminum cylinders to fragile materials such as organics. These techniques are, in principle, applicable to measurements on any solid-state conductor. First, we introduce the construction of our piston-cylinder cells including two kinds of wired platforms for transport measurements. Second, we describe the construction of the platforms and the method of introducing the samples. After reporting test results for conventional materials such as ammonium fluoride, bismuth, and tellurium, lastly, we present examples of the successful application of our method to organic materials.