A virtual experiment control and data acquisition system for in situ laser heated diamond anvil cell Raman spectroscopy

Doubled-sided laser heated diamond anvil cell methods allow simultaneous in situ confocal Raman measurements of materials up to megabar pressures and high temperatures. This paper describes a virtual control and data acquisition system developed to automate setups for simultaneous Raman/laser heating experiments. The system enables reduction of experiment time by similar to 90% in comparison to manual operations, allowing measurements of high quality Raman spectra of even highly reactive or diffusive samples, such as hydrogen at extreme conditions using continuous wave laser heating. These types of measurements are very difficult and often impossible to obtain in a manual operation mode. Complete data archiving and accurate control of various experimental parameters (e.g., on-the-fly temperature determination and self-adjusting data collection time to avoid signal saturation) can be done, and open up possibilities of other types of experiments involving extreme conditions. (c) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3484187]