A novel rapid cooling assembly design in a high-pressure cubic press apparatus

Abstract

In traditional high-pressure–temperature assembly design, priority has been given to temperature insulation and retention at high pressures. This limits the efficiency of cooling of samples at the end of experiments, with a negative impact on many studies in high-pressure Earth and planetary science. Inefficient cooling of experiments containing molten phases at high temperature leads to the formation of quench textures, which makes it impossible to quantify key compositional parameters of the original molten phase, such as their volatile contents. Here, we present a new low-cost experimental assembly for rapid cooling in a six-anvil cubic press. This assembly not only retains high heating efficiency and thermal insulation, but also enables a very high cooling rate (∼600 °C/s from 1900 °C to the glass transition temperature). Without using expensive materials or external modification of the press, the cooling rate in an assembly (∼600 °C/s) with cube lengths of 38.5 mm is about ten times faster than that in the traditional assembly (∼60 °C/s). Experiments yielding inhomogeneous quenched melt textures when the traditional assembly is used are shown to yield homogeneous silicate glass without quench textures when the rapid cooling assembly is used.