High-Pressure Single-Crystal and Powder Diffraction Workshop

Poznań, Poland, April, 2011
www.crystal.vt.edu/crystal/hpworkshop.html

Participants of the 4th Frolic Goats High-Pressure Workshop in Poznań (l to r): Andrzej Katrusiak, Marek Szafrański, Witold Zieliński, Weizhao Cai, Maciej Hodorowicz, Wojciech Nitek, Barbara Wicher, Anita Owczarzak, Tomasz Manszewski, Armand Budzianowski, Jarosław Chojnacki, Reza Kia, Katarzyna Kurpiewska, David Allan, Anna Olejniczak, Marcin Podsiadło, Michał Kaźmierczak, Michalina Anioła, Ewa Patyk, Kamil Dziubek, Hanna Pawłowska, Dorota Stępień, Marcin Stachowicz, Magdalena Sikora, Artemis Kladi, Marek Daszkiewicz, Ezgi Tulukcuoglu, Michał Dobrowolski, Julia Bąkowicz, Marcin Jarek, Damian Paliwoda, Marek Tkacz, Maciej Bujak, Mirosław Szafran, Rafał Czarnecki; absent from the photo: Zofia Dega-Szafran, Andrzej Okuniewski, Michał Andrzejewski, Waldemar Nowicki, Jolanta Darul, Paweł Piszora, Małgorzata Ratajczak-Sitarz.

Two teams of high-pressure crystallographers taking part in the race on historical draisine handcars.

Over 40 participants from 7 countries attended the 4th Frolic-Goats High-Pressure Diffraction Workshop, held at the Faculty of Chemistry, Adam Mickiewicz U. in Poznań, April 17-19, 2011. The Workshop name derives from one of the city symbols, Frolic Goats ramming their horns on the city-hall tower at high noon every day; the logo of the Workshop is composed of the Frolic Goats and opposed diamond anvils of a high-pressure cell. The Frolic Goats is a low-budget event, but a very efficient one: since it was started in 2007 several groups introduced high-pressure studies in their laboratories. High pressure is increasingly more often applied in research on physical, chemical, biological, and structural and materials chemistry projects, not to mention the traditional applications of geologists and astrophysicists. The lecturers (D. Allan, M. Tkacz, M. Bujak, M. Podsiadło, A. Olejniczak, K. Kurpiewska, K. Dziubek, D. Paliwoda, W. Zielinski, M. Sikora, Cai Weizhao, A. Budzianowski and A. Katrusiak) spoke about high-pressure techniques and structural studies in laboratories and synchrotron facilities, equations of state, phase diagrams and high-pressure structures, as well as on implementation of high-pressure equipment and methods in laboratories. Afternoon laboratories were dedicated to practical exercises with the diamond-anvil cell (DAC), its assembling and loading with samples, centering the DAC on a CCD diffractometer, diffraction data collection and processing, IR spectroscopy and auxiliary high-pressure equipment. Isothermal and isochoric crystallizations were applied for growing single crystals of new phases of substances brought in by participants. The Workshop excursion included a small Railway Station Museum in Kunowo, near Poznań, and an 8 km railway stretch between Kunowo and Bieżyn. Participants experienced the effort of driving human-powered historical draisines, produced between 1920 and 1950 – only one team managed to cover the entire 8-km distance through the picturesque, but hilly (particularly on the uphill sides), landscape. The workshop was sponsored by the Faculty of Chemistry, Agilent Technologies, Bruker Poland and Olympus Poland, and was organized under auspices of Polish Foundation for Science.