Extreme conditions research cannot be accomplished without state-of-the-art instruments. Thus, tools must be improved in order to access new domains and to expand the range of properties measured. In high pressure neutron diffraction, for example, one limitation that sample sizes need to be much larger than is the case for x-ray diffraction. This requires larger diamonds for high-pressure cells. Until recently, sufficiently large natural or synthetic diamond anvils needed for many high-pressure neutron diffraction experiments were not available.

Addressing this problem, Carnegie scientist Reinhard Boehler and his team have created special new large-volume diamond anvil cells. A paper about their engineering efforts is has recently been published by Review of Scientific Instruments [R. Boehler et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 88, 083905 (2017)], and the American Institute of Physics has highlighted this work in a new SciLight, which can be found at http://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.4999558.