Abstract
High pressure thermal analysis and differential thermal analysis have been developed for detecting phase transitions in an MA-8 type apparatus. By using these methods, the melting and freezing of gold was investigated at 12 GPa. We observed the latent heat signal of gold both on melting and freezing processes, and determined the melting temperature at 1868±10 K. This temperature is lower by about 60 K than the extrapolation of the previous experiments by using the Kraut-Kennedy equation. We interpreted this discrepancy to be due to the pressure effect on the emf of the W-3%Re/W-25%Re thermocouple.
