Development of a hybrid piston cylinder cell for quasielastic neutron scattering experiments up to 1 GPa

We have developed a hybrid piston cylinder cell for quasielastic neutron scattering (QENS) experiments up to about 1 GPa. It consists of a fretted cylinder made of the high tensile steel (SNCM439) liner and the Al alloy (NA700) jacket. Performance tests revealed that the cell can withstand a pressure of 0.8 GPa without irreversible damage and has 4.4 times larger neutron transmission at 3.14 meV (5.10 Å in wavelength) than that of a conventional CuBe monobloc cylinder. Combined with the sample assembly devised for suppressing multiple scattering, high quality QENS spectra of water were obtained up to 0.8 GPa. This study illustrates the efficacy of the hybrid cylinders not only for increasing maximum available pressure but also manipulating the available pressure and the signal intensity, depending on the purpose of the experiments.