Chemistry is the center of natural science. Its core mission is to create and understand new substances. The new substances and the understanding of them in the view of chemistry are the foundation of further research in other subjects. High pressure science and techniques provide a new dimension for chemistry, in which you can create numerous new compounds and materials, which will revolutionize human understanding for substances and change human’s life.
The central question of chemistry is the chemical reaction. The basis of the investigation on chemical reactions is the understanding of the static and dynamic structures of the substances. Different from the traditional high temperature solid phase reactions, solution reactions, and gas phase reactions, the pressure employed for the proceeding of chemical reactions can be carefully controlled, with which the reactants can be "pushed" over the reaction barrier quasi-statically, which is much easier to be characterized. For example, the collision process in the solution reaction, as well as the gas phase reaction, is actually a tiny dynamic pressure process. This dynamic process will be “frozen” in some special geometry by the applied static pressure, which will make it easier to study the reaction process, and will also be of great help for the study of the “real” atmospheric chemical reaction.
High pressure chemistry is still a new subject. For a long time, chemists in this area mainly focused on pressure around or less than 1GPa, studied the effects of pressure on chemical reactions, and prepare new materials (such as superhard materials) under high temperature and high pressure conditions. Systematical study on the chemical reactions (especially the organic reactions) still needs to be developed.
