A practical Laser-Heated Diamond Anvil Cell synthesis technique and recovery workflow for metastable MnSb2 and YbZn2 phases

TL;DR

This paper introduces a practical laser-heated diamond anvil cell workflow for synthesizing and recovering metastable intermetallic phases, enabling detailed structural and electronic property studies under extreme conditions.

Contribution

The authors develop an integrated LHDAC synthesis method that stabilizes and recovers metastable phases like MnSb2 and YbZn2 for post-synthesis analysis.

Findings

Successful synthesis of MnSb2 and YbZn2 phases under moderate pressures.

Pressure-dependent electronic and magnetic property changes observed in recovered samples.

Structural analysis confirms targeted phase formation despite microstrain and secondary phases.

Abstract

The creation and exploration of new materials under extreme pressure-temperature conditions has become increasingly reliant on laser-heated diamond anvil cell (LHDAC) techniques, which provide direct access to previously unexplored regions of multinary phase diagrams. Whereas numerous high-pressure phases have been identified in situ, systematic recovery and post-synthesis physical property characterization of these materials remain significant challenges. In this work, we present the development of an integrated LHDAC synthesis and demonstrate a practical LHDAC-based synthesis workflow that enables stabilization and recovery of metastable intermetallic phases for subsequent structural and transport studies. Using this approach, we successfully achieved LHDAC synthesis of high-pressure MnSb2 and YbZn2 phases under moderate pressures. Synchrotron X-ray diffraction and spatial mapping confirm dominant formation of the targeted phases, whereas laboratory-based refinement quantifies phase fractions despite intrinsic microstrain and minor secondary phases. High-pressure transport measurements on recovered samples reveal tunable by pressure electronic instabilities in both systems. In MnSb2, pressure suppresses two high-temperature magnetic ordering anomalies, observed in transport, by 5 GPa and for higher pressures induces a new low-temperature feature that increases with further pressure increase. In hexagonal high-pressure YbZn2, an electronic reconstruction emerges at ~11 GPa, characterized by semiconducting-like behavior from ~ 30 K to 300 K and a broad low-temperature coherence crossover near 30 K. Our results establish LHDAC synthesis not only as a structural discovery tool, but also as an experimental platform for investigating correlated quantum states stabilized far from equilibrium thermodynamic conditions.