Shaft cryostat for cooling of high-pressure chambers with diamond and sapphire anvils

A vertically loaded shaft cryostat based on a closed-cycle cryocooler built around a Sumitomo SRP-062B pulse tube has been developed. The cryostat is intended for investigating the structure and phase transformations of materials via neutron diffraction experiments on samples at pressures up to 10 GPa created in high-pressure chambers with sapphire and diamond an vils in the temperature range of 6—300 K. The cryostat has been tested with the help of the DISK diffractometer of the Russian Research Centre Kurchatov Institute. A high-pressure chamber is loaded into the cryostat through its shaft with the help of an insert. The chamber is cooled by heat-exchange gas (helium-4) an d a heat exchanger that is thermally connected with the cryocooler’s second stage. The minimum attained temperature of a sample is 6 K. The drift diameter of the shaft is 120 mm, making it possible to cool chambers with lengths up to 200 mm (in the vertical orientation) and 110 mm (in the horizontal orientation). The cryostat has been designed and manufactured at the Frank Laboratory of Neutron Physics of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research.