The UNLV High Pressure Science and Engineering Center, established in July 1998 with support from the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, brings together chemists, mechanical engineers, and physicists to consider fundamental experimental, computational, and engineering problems of materials under high pressure. A central focus is properties of materials relevant to NNSA's Stockpile Stewardship Program. That is, we give high priority to measuring static and dynamic high-pressure studies for validating and improving computational models over a largely unexplored range of very high pressures and temperatures. Materials under study include d- and f-band metals, energetic materials and their detonation products, foams, and hydrogen and other and low-Z elements and their compounds. HiPSEC staff will measure equilibrium thermochemical properties, mechanical properties, reaction kinetics, and reaction products at static pressures using in situ x-ray diffraction; absorption, emission, light-scattering spectroscopy from infrared to x-ray wavelengths and other chemical and physical methods. Our mission also encompasses shock experiments at NNSA's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratory Albuquerque and recovering samples from these experiments for chemical, physical, and mechanical analysis. Theoretical and computational studies focus on highly correlated and "warm" condensed matter systems. Under the Department of Defense's MURI program, HiPSEC scientists are studying effect of defects on the mechanisms of initiation and energy release in energetic molecular crystals. Scientists from the University of South Florida, and Vanderbilt University and several DOD and DOE laboratories. This integratation of high pressure science programs in Nevada with programs at NNSA's National Laboratories, DOD Research Laboratories, and other university laboratories aims to enhance Nevada's scientific and educational infrastructure, while developing focused high pressure research programs relevant to the missions of DOE and DOD.
HiPSEC is a member of the High Pressure Collaborative Access Team (HPCAT) at the Advanced Photon Source of Argonne National Laboratory.
In addition to HPCAT facilities at the Advanced Photon Source, HiPSEC has materials science laboratories on the UNLV campus for crystallography, solid-state spectroscopy, cryogenic studies, and synthesizing and characterizing foams. HiPsec also maintains computational centers for engineering and solid-state theory on the UNLV campus.
UNLV Department of Physics
UNLV Department of Chemistry
UNLV Department of Mechanical Engineering
UNLV Department of Geoscience