Report for
2003 of the IUCr Commission on High Pressure.
The main objective of the high-pressure
commission is to promote and coordinate advances and new developments in
crystallographic applications of high-pressure science. A special emphasis is
given in helping new and/or young scientists with their specific scientific
problems to be able to use high-pressure as one of the tools to answer their
specific structural questions and in turn to contribute with their work to the
development of high-pressure crystallography. As the main tools to achieve this
goal, the commission organizes workshops in each of the two years between the
triennial IUCr congress. In
2003, this workshop was organized at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
and sponsored jointly by LBL, the NSF-sponsored “Consortium for Materials
Properties Research in Earth Sciences” (COMPRES) and the IUCr.
In addition to the ‘regular’ workshop, the commission for the first time helped
to organize a crystallography summer school held in
Erice Summer School:
The “High-Pressure Crystallography” course was
organized as the 34th Crystallographic Course of the Euro Summer
School and simultaneously a NATO Advanced Science Institute at the Ettore Majorana Centre,
The idea of this course originated in 1998 in
the IUCr High-Pressure Commission. Initially it was planned to be held in
Apart of the lectures, there were 10 workshops organized
focusing on the practical aspects of the theoretical calculations for
high-pressure research, and of experiments either in in-house labs or national
and international research facilities. These workshops were overbooked by the
students and additional meetings with the tutors had to be arranged. Two poster
sessions presented nearly 70 posters and provided yet an additional forum for
discussions. The school was also
transmitted life on the internet. This forum was used by several dozens of
participants, who contributed questions and answers to the discussions via the
chat-room.
Program, as well as organization of the course was evaluated
very positively by the participants. We are very grateful for the financial
support for young scientists from IUCr. (Andrej Katrusiak)
2003 IUCr
High-Pressure Workshop, LBL,
The regular IUCr-high-pressure
workshop was organized at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) in
In addition to a range of interesting
micro-symposia (“anisotropy in P/T deformations”, “kinetics of structural
change”, “theory of structure under pressure”, “transport under pressure”,
“phase transitions”, “synthesis at high pressure”) this year’s workshop also
offered four hands-on introductory workshops on “high-pressure infra-red
spectroscopy”, “high-pressure powder diffraction”, “laser-heated diamond anvil
cells” and “general alignment and maintenance of diamond anvil cells”. These
workshops greatly benefited from the infrastructure of the hosting ALS. As
usual for the IUCr high-pressure workshops, the oral
lectures were also complemented by two poster sessions. The workshop attracted
more than 80 participants. Thanks to the support of IUCr
and NSF, a total of 20 young students benefited from travel support.
Homepage:
The high-pressure commissions
homepage is maintained by the commission member John Loveday and continues to
update the high-pressure community on information on software, future and past
meetings, central facilities, scientists and publications in the high-pressure
field. The homepage can be accessed on http://www.iucr.org/iucr-top/comm/chp/index.html.
Future Meetings:
Part of the commission’s activity in 2003
related to upcoming meetings in 2004 and 2005. In 2004, the commission is
organizing another IUCr high-pressure workshop, this
time at the new Canadian synchrotron radiation facility in
In addition to this, the commission spent time
in putting together a draft proposal for an interesting high-pressure program
for the up-coming 2005 general congress and assembly in