Inductive measurement of the critical temperature of high-Tc superconductors in a diamond anvil cell

A simple AC susceptibility technique in a diamond anvil cell has been successfully used to detect the superconducting transition of high-Tc superconductors under hydrostatic pressure of up to 14 GPa. The system uses two radically balanced detection coils mounted inside the cell. Measurements have been performed on YBa2Cu3O7-x for which Tc is found to decrease linearly with pressure above 2 GPa with a slope of -2.5 K GPa-1 for single crystals and -1.1 K GPa-1 for polycrystalline samples.