EHPRG: The European High Pressure Research Group

Welcome

Welcome to the official website of the European High Pressure Research Group (EHPRG).

EHPRG is non-profitable academic association established in 1963 which is devoted to science and technology of matter under high pressure. It organizes an annual meeting which brings together hundreds of scientists of various fields, mainly physics, chemistry, Earth and planetary sciences, bio- and food science and technology.

The reasonable size of the group, low conference fees, and a friendly relationship between the attendants have made EHPRG meetings a major event in the European high-pressure community for more than half a century.

Upcoming high pressure meetings

The current COVID pandemic has led to the cancellation of numerous scientific conferences over the last year, including the 2020 GRC and GRS high-pressure conferences, and the combined AIRAPT/EHPRG-2021 conference that was to be held in Edinburgh this summer. The negative effects of this are being most keenly felt by younger researchers, who have missed golden opportunities to present both their work, and themselves, to the rest of the community.
This online conference aims to address this, by providing up to 360 20-minute oral presentations in which young and early career researchers in our field to present their research to the rest of our international community. Such researchers will be offered the great majority of these slots, complemented by some didactic talks from more established researchers and facility operators. Everyone in the high-pressure community is welcome to attend.
CESC-2021 will be chaired by Malcolm McMahon.
For more information, please visit the official webpage of CSEC2021.

Upcoming EHPRG Meeting

The Joint 28th AIRAPT and 60th EHPRG International Conference on High Pressure Science and Technology (AIRAPT-2021), originally scheduled for July 2021, has been postponed, and will be held in Edinburgh, UK, in 2023. Exact dates will be announced as soon as possible. AIRAPT-21 will be chaired by Malcolm McMahon (CSEC and University of Edinburgh, UK).
In spite of the Joint AIRAPT-EHPRG Conference, an online Conference on Science at Extreme Conditions will take place in 2021. This online event will have a special focus on young and early career researchers. This will NOT be an AIRAPT/EHPRG conference, but the organizers expect to be able to offer up to 360 slots for 20-minute, and 5-minute “lightning”, oral presentations, spread over 5 days, each of which will have two 2-hour time slots (11am-1pm and 3-5pm UK time), timed so as to provide “office hours” access to speakers from Asia/Europe and Americas/Europe, respectively. Each 2-hour time slot will host up to 6 parallel sessions. The great majority of the available slots for talks will be given to young researchers, complemented by some didactic presentations from more established researchers and facility providers. Everyone in the high-pressure community is welcome to attend.
For more information, please visit the official webpage of AIRAPT-21.

High-pressure in the headlines

Selection of high-pressure related titles from top scientific journals.

Can't open remote newsfeed [404].

Chemical transformations of [MAu8(PPh3)8]2+ (M = Pt, Pd) and [Au9(PPh3)8]3+ in methanol induced by irradiation of atmospheric pressure plasma

by Sojiro Emori

29 Sep 2021 at 2:00pm

Layer-Dependent Pressure Effect on the Electronic Structure of 2D Black Phosphorus

by Shenyang Huang, Yang Lu, Fanjie Wang, Yuchen Lei, Chaoyu Song, Jiasheng Zhang, Qiaoxia Xing, Chong Wang, Yuangang Xie, Lei Mu, Guowei Zhang, Hao Yan, Bin Chen, and Hugen Yan

Through infrared spectroscopy, we systematically study the pressure effect on electronic structures of few-layer black phosphorus (BP) with layer number ranging from 2 to 13. We reveal that the pressure-induced shift of optical transitions exhibits strong layer dependence. In sharp contrast to the b...

26 Oct 2021 at 12:00pm

Structure of High-Pressure Supercooled and Glassy Water

by Riccardo Foffi and Francesco Sciortino

We numerically investigate the structure of deep supercooled and glassy water under pressure, covering the range of densities corresponding to the experimentally produced high- and very-high-density amorphous phases. At $T=188\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{K}$, a continuous increase in density is observed ...

19 Oct 2021 at 12:00pm

Coexistence of Surface Superconducting and Three-Dimensional Topological Dirac States in Semimetal KZnBi

by Junseong Song, Sunghun Kim, Youngkuk Kim, Huixia Fu, Jahyun Koo, Zhen Wang, Gyubin Lee, Jouhahn Lee, Sang Ho Oh, Joonho Bang, Taku Matsushita, Nobuo Wada, Hiroki Ikegami, Jonathan D. Denlinger, Young Hee Lee, Binghai Yan, Yeongkwan Kim, and Sung Wng Kim

A newly discovered 3D topological Dirac semimetal exhibits surface superconductivity at ambient pressure, a key step in the development of systems sought after for quantum computation.

28 Jun 2021 at 12:00pm

Pressure-induced structural phase transition and suppression of Jahn-Teller distortion in the quadruple perovskite structure

by V. S. Bhadram, B. Joseph, D. Delmonte, E. Gilioli, B. Baptiste, Y. Le Godec, R. P. S. M. Lobo, and A. Gauzzi

By means of in situ synchrotron x-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy under hydrostatic pressure, we investigate the structural stability of the quadruple perovskite $\mathrm{La}{\mathrm{Mn}}_{7}{\mathrm{O}}_{12}$. At 34 GPa, the data unveil a first-order structural phase transition from monoclin...

26 Oct 2021 at 12:00pm

Influence of Cr substitution on the reversibility of the magnetocaloric effect in Ni-Cr-Mn-In Heusler alloys

by C. Salazar-Mejía, P. Devi, S. Singh, C. Felser, and J. Wosnitza

We present the effect of substitution-induced pressure on the reversibility of the magnetocaloric effect (MCE) in ${\mathrm{Ni}}_{2}{\mathrm{Cr}}_{x}{\mathrm{Mn}}_{1.4−x}{\mathrm{In}}_{0.6}$ ($x=0.1$, 0.2, 0.3) alloys, through characterization in pulsed magnetic fields. We measured the adiabatic tem...

13 Oct 2021 at 12:00pm

Ab initio prediction of nontrivial topological band and superconductivity in stable metallic Si allotropes at ambient pressure

by Yoon-Gu Kang, In-Ho Lee, Myung Joon Han, and Kee Joo Chang

Silicon is a semiconductor and widely used as the key element for modern electronic devices. Various metallic superconducting phases have been reported, but most retain their crystal structure at high pressures. Thus, it remains a challenge to search for potential superconducting Si allotropes. In this article, the authors propose novel metallic Si allotropes that meet the conditions for dynamic, mechanical, and thermal stability at ambient pressure through machine learning and first-principles electronic structure calculations. The new allotropes are superconductors and even exhibit a nontrivial band topology, providing a promising platform for realizing a topological superconducting state in all-Si systems.

13 Oct 2021 at 12:00pm

Automated free-energy calculation from atomistic simulations

by Sarath Menon, Yury Lysogorskiy, Jutta Rogal, and Ralf Drautz

We devise automated workflows for the calculation of Helmholtz and Gibbs free energies and their temperature and pressure dependence and provide the corresponding computational tools. We employ nonequilibrium thermodynamics for evaluating the free energy of solid and liquid phases at a given tempera...

11 Oct 2021 at 12:00pm

Magnetocaloric effect in the Laves-phase ${\mathrm{Ho}}_{1−x}{\mathrm{Dy}}_{x}{\mathrm{Al}}_{2}$ family in high magnetic fields

by E. Bykov, W. Liu, K. Skokov, F. Scheibel, O. Gutfleisch, S. Taskaev, V. Khovaylo, D. Plakhotskiy, C. Salazar Mejia, J. Wosnitza, and T. Gottschall

Hydrogen has the largest gravimetric energy density among all chemical fuels. At the same time, the density of gaseous ${\mathrm{H}}_{2}$ is extremely low, which makes its compression to high pressures, liquefaction, or solid-state storage necessary for transport purposes. Liquid hydrogen ($\mathrm{...

27 Sep 2021 at 12:00pm

Revisiting the influence of Fe excess in the synthesis of ${\mathrm{BaFe}}_{2}{\mathrm{S}}_{3}$

by M. L. Amigó, Q. Stahl, A. Maljuk, A. U. B. Wolter, C. Hess, J. Geck, S. Wurmehl, S. Seiro, and B. Büchner

${\mathrm{BaFe}}_{2}{\mathrm{S}}_{3}$ is a quasi-one-dimensional antiferromagnetic insulator that becomes superconducting under hydrostatic pressure. The magnetic ordering temperature ${T}_{N}$, as well as the presence of superconductivity have been found to be sample dependent. It has been argued t...

10 Sep 2021 at 12:00pm

Tin-pest problem as a test of density functionals using high-throughput calculations

by Michael J. Mehl, Mateo Ronquillo, David Hicks, Marco Esters, Corey Oses, Rico Friedrich, Andriy Smolyanyuk, Eric Gossett, Daniel Finkenstadt, and Stefano Curtarolo

At ambient pressure tin transforms from its ground state, the semimetal $α$-Sn (diamond structure), to metallic $β$-Sn at $13{\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}}^{∘}\mathrm{C}$ (286 K). There may be a further transition to a simple hexagonal phase, $γ$-Sn, above 450 K. These relatively low transition temp...

30 Aug 2021 at 12:00pm

Unconventional iron-magnesium compounds at terapascal pressures

by Yimei Fang, Yang Sun, Renhai Wang, Feng Zheng, Shunqing Wu, Cai-Zhuang Wang, Renata M. Wentzcovitch, and Kai-Ming Ho

Being a lithophile element at ambient pressure, magnesium has been long believed to be immiscible with iron. Authors of a recent study showed that pressure turns magnesium into a siderophile element and can produce unconventional Fe-Mg compounds [Gao et al., New J. Chem. 43, 17403 (2019)]. Here, we...

26 Oct 2021 at 12:00pm

Superconducting and structural properties of the type-I superconductor ${\mathrm{PdTe}}_{2}$ under high pressure

by Yusaku Furue, Tadachika Fujino, Marc V. Salis, Huaqian Leng, Fumihiro Ishikawa, Takashi Naka, Satoshi Nakano, Yingkai Huang, Anne de Visser, and Ayako Ohmura

The transition metal dichalcogenide $\mathrm{Pd}{\mathrm{Te}}_{2}$ has attractive features based on its classification as a type-II Dirac semimetal and the occurrence of type-I superconductivity, providing a platform for discussion of a topological superconductor. Our recent work revealed that type-...

25 Oct 2021 at 12:00pm

Interplay of magnetism and dimerization in the pressurized Kitaev material $β\text{−}{\mathrm{Li}}_{2}{\mathrm{IrO}}_{3}$

by Bin Shen, Anton Jesche, Maximilian L. Seidler, Friedrich Freund, Philipp Gegenwart, and Alexander A. Tsirlin

We present magnetization measurements on polycrystalline $β\text{−}{\mathrm{Li}}_{2}{\mathrm{IrO}}_{3}$ under hydrostatic pressures up to 3 GPa and construct the temperature-pressure phase diagram of this material. Our data confirm that magnetic order breaks down in a first-order phase transition at...

22 Oct 2021 at 12:00pm

Continuous measurement of ultrasonic elastic wave velocities, X-ray radiography and X-ray diffraction of Zr50Cu40Al10 metallic glass at high pressure and high temperature conditions

by Yoshio Kono

21 Jun 2021 at 8:59am

Elastic properties of Mg-phase D at high pressure

by Chaowen Xu

26 Jul 2021 at 2:45pm

High pressure stability of β-Zr: no evidence for isostructural phase transitions

by E. F. O’Bannon

30 Jul 2021 at 8:30am

Phase transitions of ScOOH under high pressure

by Yoshiaki Ito