The additive manufacturing technology commonly known as 3D-printing has recently had some significant developments which enabled processing of a wider range of materials, including metals and alloys, as well as better resolution of printing. This enabled engineers to design parts which previously could not be manufactured. This also affected design of high-pressure instruments in two major areas – high-pressure cells and the collimators used with pressure cells for neutron and X-ray scattering.

The design of a miniature high-pressure diamond anvil cell was enabled by the new technology of 3D micro laser sintering technology [1]. This is the first application of the use of rapid prototyping technology for constructing a high-pressure apparatus. The cell is specifically designed for use as an X-ray diffraction cell that can be used with commercially available diffractometers and open-flow cryogenic equipment to collect data at low temperature and high pressure. The cell is constructed from stainless steel 316L and is about 9 mm in diameter and 7 mm in height, giving it both small dimensions and low thermal mass, and fits into the cooling envelope of a standard CryostreamTM cooling system. The laser sintering enabled the manufacturing of a micro-buttress thread of custom design. The cell is capable of reaching pressures of up to 15 GPa with 600 μm diameter culets of diamond anvils.

Collimation is essential to reduce levels of parasitic scattering from neutron instruments and large pieces of sample environment. The increasing demand for variety of sample environment at neutron facilities means that the sample space be kept relatively large to incorporate a range of auxiliary equipment (magnets, fridges, furnaces), which places a limit on the efficiency of the collimator. Here we present a novel technique to incorporate significantly improved collimation into the sample environment, through 3D laser sintering custom made collimators [2]. This has particular applicability for high pressure instrumentation, where levels of background are significantly higher. The customisability of the design technique means that numerous collimators can be printed relatively cheaply, and quickly, improving the quality of a wide range of different measurements for a particular neutron instrument, for a number of different pressure cells.

We also discuss the properties of 3D-printed materials as compared to their conventional bulk analogues in application to high-pressure technology.

[1] H. Jin et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 88, 035103 (2017)

[2] C. J. Ridley et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 86, 095114 (2015)