Validation of a Sapphire Gas-Pressure Cell for Real-Time In Situ Neutron Diffraction Studies of Hydrogenation Reactions

A gas-pressure cell, based on a leuco-sapphire single-crystal, serving as pressure vessel and sample holder, is presented for real time in situ studies of solid-gas hydrogenation reactions. stainless steel corpus, coated with neutron absorbing varnish, allows alignment the single-crystal holder minimizing contributions to diffraction pattern. Openings corpus enable scattering well contactless temperature surveillance laser heating. The cell validated via deuteration palladium powder, giving reliable data at high-intensity diffractometer D20 Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), Grenoble, France. It was tested up 15.0 MPa hydrogen room temperature, 718 K ambient 584 9.5 pressure.