Dear Colleagues,

In the last two decades, synthesis at extreme conditions and in situ characterization of solid compounds have experienced an enormous gain in both quality and quantity because of extensive progress in radiation sources, detectors, and instrumentation. Especially for the field of innovative materials, variation of thermodynamic state variables, such as pressure or temperature, is a versatile and efficient tool to affect the stability of phases due to the underlying interdependency of crystal structures, and physical, as well as chemical, properties. New and often metastable polymorphs grant access to novel structure property combinations, which are of interest in both fundamental and applied materials science.

In addition, suitable combinations of temperature and pressure open pathways to compounds with previously-inapproachable compositions, due to miscibility gaps or extreme vapor pressure differences. These novel atomic arrangements expand and consolidate our knowledge base on phase diagrams and potential materials. Of interest are inorganic compounds, intermetallic phases, materials, minerals, and pharmaceuticals. Topics include, but are not limited to:

• In situ synthesis of new compounds and modifications

• High-pressure high-temperature synthesis of metastable materials

• Structure and property characterization at extreme conditions, such as pressure, strain, or temperature.

• Advances in the development of probe heads for the fast in situ detection of phase formation

• Characterization of polymorphs forming at high-pressure, high-temperature or a combination thereof. Properties under harsh environments, such as corrosive, erosive, high temperature, high pressure, vacuum, low pO₂, hard radiation (gamma or neutron), etc.

• Pressure temperature phase diagrams and their modeling

Prof. Dr. Arno Pfitzner
PD Dr. Ulrich Schwarz
Guest Editor

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• high pressure

• high temperature

• modeling

• extreme environments