Address: HPPI RAS, 142190, Troitsk, Moscow, Russia
Phone: 7-495-8510582
Fax: 7-495-8510012
E-mail: [email protected]

The Institute, founded by Academician L.F. Vereshchagin in 1958, received international status in the beginning of 1960's due to the successful synthesis of diamond and cubic boron nitride. The original equipment and technologies, developed in the Institute, formed the basis of diamond industry in the USSR .

The subsequent synthesis of a super dense silica (stishovite) that received instant world-wide recognition and paved the way for future investigations of the physics of the Earth and planets, confirmed the position of the Institute as a first-class scientific organization. Recent discovery of  superconducting diamonds, made in the Institute in 2004, demonstrates it again.

At the same time studies in condensed matter physics were developed at the Institute that included investigations of structural, elastic, and electronic properties of materials under high pressures, which resulted in many considerable scientific achievements.

At present, the Institute has 10 scientific and applied scientific subdivisions. The scientific mission of the Institute consists in investigations of substance properties in conditions of strong static compression that can be divided in two major parts: (1) fundamental investigations of the structure, electronic properties, stability and phase transformations under pressure in various substances and  developing theoretical models of observed phenomena, (2) high pressure materials studies, which includes syntheses of new materials and investigation of their properties. The part (2) covers the synthesis of diamond and cubic boron nitride single crystals, new crystalline and amorphous forms of carbon; the development and investigation of new composite ultra dispersed superhard materials and alloys; as well as the development of technology for producing various types of tools.

The Institute has a wide range of contacts with scientific organizations in Russia and abroad. Joint investigations are carried out with Institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences such as: the Institute of Crystallography, the Physical Institute, the Institute of General Physics, as well as the Joint Institute for Nuclear Researches, the Institute of Graphite, the Moscow State University, Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA), Geophysical Laboratory of Carnegie Institute (Washington, USA), Oxford and De Montfort Universities (UK), Grenoble High Magnetic Field Laboratory (France), the International Laboratory of High Magnetic Fields (Poland), and a number of other scientific organizations from Germany, Poland, France, USA, China, Japan.

Technological developments and scientific equipment made in the Institute have been using in many scientific centers and companies of Great Britain, Germany, France, USA, China, and other countries. Nowadays efficient scientific work in the field of high pressure physics cannot be carried out in a single Institute, no matter how large it may be, without using powerful sources of neutron and synchrotron radiations, fast computers, etc, the Institute continues to promote international scientific collaboration and is always ready to cooperate in the field of fundamental and applied studies.