you might take a look at www.easylab.com which their tagline is "Science under pressure".

If you want a simple cell, buy two pieces of quartz window and sandwich the polymer thin film in between. The pressure can be generated with a pre-tensioned clips and the pressure can be measured by a tactile pressure measurement system (I-Scan, www.tekscan.com). The pressure can be varied by the tension the clips.

I believe that you will most likely need to make your own setup.

The previous suggestion of using quartz windows to form the sandwich is good as they will possess well defined optical properties.

I am not familiar with the load measurement devices referred to (I am interested in obtaining such a system myself) however with clips you will need to ensure that pressure is even across the window, so possibly multiple pressure sensors should be used if there are clips involved.

Alternatively one could form a 'vice' with a hole in the position of the optical path. by placing the quartz/polymer/quartz sandwich in the vice, you could then achieve linear and even pressure across the sample, without interfering with the beam. Then the setup would be more repeatable, easier to setup and would be suitable for use with either just a single one of those pressure sensors, or even, if funding or otherwise does not allow, attaching weight to close the vice would give well defined pressure.

Edit:

Also if you just wish the pressure to be at one pressure only and not to vary, then you might be able to use a sprung type vice. Which is simple such that it would be repeatable and even more simple. I had initially assumed you might wish to vary the pressure to investigate the influence of pressure upon the optical properties. If not and it is just a repeatable pressure setup, a sprung vice may be simple, cheap and repeatable.

Hi Cheun and Matthew, Thank you very much for your time and answers. Cheun, I have checked out easylab before and they are not much of a help for me. Most of their pressure cells are very bulky for me to use in my setup. I was actually hoping that something similar to what you described as quartz-window-sandwich is readily available in the market!! tekscan website is new to me and that is indeed very helpful, I am looking through them now and hopefully I will find something now. Meanwhile if you feel any more sparks feel free to pitch in.

@Matthew, You have assumed right, I do want to vary the pressure, say somewhere between 0 - 200 kbar. A circular / annular type vice on the outside of the two quartz plates could work. Here are my thoughts -- I could possibly use one or two different conjugated polymer (because ultimately I will be using polymer inside for spectroscopy) and do FT-IR to measure how much pressure I am applying checking on the sensitivity and usage of the vice. This can be done using pressure-induced blueshift in the polymer IR-active C-H frequency at ∼3000 cm−1. I am at this point not sure whether a vice can apply 200 kbar pressure. A pressure sensor can be brought in next in an independent experiment at the same settings of the vice to measure and calibrate the pressure obtained from the FTIR (question: which one is more accurate?). I wish a pressure sensor can be built in the cell itself though but the polymer film is only few 100 nm thick, and I doubt there is any cheap 100nm thick pressure sensor available. Do you think it could work?

Cheers,

Palash

Hi Palesh,

You need not locate the pressure sensor within the polymer layer itself. If you have say quartz/polymer/quartz/sensor it would be the same. Since as you mention 100nm is very thin, no sensors I know of come close!

To answer you capability question, a vice can be made to almost any specification. Indeed if you want very high pressure you would either gear the mechanism if it was manual or more appropriately move to pneumatics or then hydrolics (in the case of your pressure) and then you can easily know the force you are applying without a pressure sensor! No need for using ftir in this case.

Problem is I dont know if the quartz windows would be capable, probably but 200kbar is high for something not designed for that application.

Just to add I would avoid using a polymer to contain the polymer you are measuring unless it is exceptionally well characterised, as you will end up with more then one material under polymer deformation, it just complicates matters.

Hi Matthew, Yes, using two polymers together will indeed create complications, but I was not planning that. I wanted a polymer with known blue shift (in FTIR as known technique) to check on the applied pressure before I test my hypothesis in unknown spectroscopy on the same or any other polymer, but never two of them together.

I was wondering too whether 200 (or even 150) kbar is too high for quartz; I am hoping to find someone who can answer that. Do you happen to know where I can find these vices as well (am I being too lazy?)? :) Thx, Palash

I am not sure where you buy the vices, I have always used my own tooling (i.e. designed things myself / with colleagues) . I have not needed to use the same pressures as yourself, I would imagine that an existing industrial vice or press could be 'adapted'.

If you were using hydraulics (or pneumatics), then you would be able to calculate the pressure without the need for FTIR etc.

Why dont you use a diamond anvil cell? If you like you can even deposit the film on one of the anvils. You can then even apply uniaxial stress.See paper in Solid State Communications by Sotiris Ves et al.

Hi Manuel, diamond anvil cell is certainly an option. Quartz was (is) the first choice because the polymer(s) I am working on self-assemble on top of hydrophobic glassy surface very nicely. Although H-terminated diamond surface is hydrophobic by itself, probably not hydrophobic enough to simulate similar self-assembly condition. So we have not been able to create similar "spectroscopic-state" of that polymer on top of diamond as of now. Although most of the commercially available anvil cells are a bit bulky for my setup, diamond windows will certainly withstand the pressure I want. Thanks, Palash