Boron-doped diamond heater and its application to large-volume, high-pressure, and high-temperature experiments

A temperature of 3500 degrees C was generated using a diamond resistance heater in a large-volume Kawai-type high-pressure apparatus. Re and LaCrO(3) have conventionally been used for heaters in high-pressure studies but they cannot generate temperatures higher than 2900 degrees C and make in situ x-ray observations difficult due to their high x-ray absorption. Using a boron-doped diamond heater overcomes these problems and achieves stable temperature generation for pressure over 10 GPa. The heater starting material is a cold-compressed mixture of graphite with boron used to avoid the manufacturing difficulties due to the extreme hardness of diamond. The diamond heater was synthesized in situ from the boron-graphite mixture at temperature of 1600+/-100 degrees C and pressure of 20 GPa. By using the proposed technique, we have employed the diamond heater for high-temperature generation in a large-volume high-pressure apparatus. Achievement of temperatures above 3000 degrees C allows us to measure the melting points of the important constituents in earth's mantle (MgSiO(3), SiO(2), and Al(2)O(3)) and core (Fe and Ni) at extremely high pressures.