Using a standard gasket preparation, the GAC cell operates like a
regular diamond anvil cell. It can therefore be used for in situ
x-ray diffraction experiments as well as for optical spectroscopy,
since garnet is transparent for the respective wavelength spectra.
However, the garnet structure gives rise to many Raman- and IR-active lattice
modes, which is clearly disadvantageous for optical in situ studies and a
drawback of the cell in comparism to a diamond anvil cell.
On the other hand, deformation experiments using this technique are relatively
simple and
inexpensive. Furthermore, combining deformation experiments with
ultrasonic measurements using a recently developed technique [9]
seems to be a particularly interesting application of this cell.
In-situ information on the time dependency of specific subprocesses could
lead to a better understanding of the underlying kinetic mechanisms at the
microscopic scale.
The work on this topic is in current progress.