A practical Laser-Heated Diamond Anvil Cell synthesis technique and recovery workflow for metastable MnSb2 and YbZn2 phases
The creation and exploration of new materials under extreme pressure-temperature conditions has become increasingly reliant on laser-heated diamond anvil cell (LHDAC) techniques, which provide direct access to previously unexplored regions of multinary phase diagrams. Whereas numerous high-pressure phases have been identified in situ, systematic recovery and post-synthesis physical property characterization of these materials remain significant challenges. In this work, we present the development of an integrated LHDAC synthesis and demonstrate a practical LHDAC-based synthesis workflow that enables stabilization and recovery of metastable intermetallic phases for subsequent structural and transport studies. Using this approach, we successfully achieved LHDAC synthesis of high-pressure MnSb2 and YbZn2 phases under moderate pressures. Synchrotron X-ray diffraction and spatial mapping confirm dominant formation of the targeted phases, whereas laboratory-based refinement quantifies phase fractions despite intrinsic microstrain and minor secondary phases. High-pressure transport measurements on recovered samples reveal tunable by pressure electronic instabilities in both systems. In MnSb2, pressure suppresses two high-temperature magnetic ordering anomalies, observed in transport, by 5 GPa and for higher pressures induces a new low-temperature feature that increases with further pressure increase. In hexagonal high-pressure YbZn2, an electronic reconstruction emerges at ~11 GPa, characterized by semiconducting-like behavior from ~ 30 K to 300 K and a broad low-temperature coherence crossover near 30 K. Our results establish LHDAC synthesis not only as a structural discovery tool, but also as an experimental platform for investigating correlated quantum states stabilized far from equilibrium thermodynamic conditions.