Determination of the critical point of gold

Wire-shaped gold specimens are placed in a new, improved high-pressure vessel, which is part of a fast capacitor-discharge circuit and in which static pressures above 600 MPa can be reached with distilled water as the pressure-transmitting medium. The specimens are self-heated resistively by a current pulse. The current through the specimen, the voltage drop across it, and its temperature are recorded as a function of time with submicrosecond resolution. The radial expansion of the specimen is determined with a CCD camera. Experiments are performed at different pressures. When the critical pressure is exceeded, there is no liquid-gas phase transition; hence, no sudden change in the thermal expansion rate is observed. The results for temperature, pressure, and specific volume at the critical point of gold are as follows: T-c = 7400 +/- 1100 K, p(c) = 530 +/- 20 MPa, and nu(c) = 0.13 +/- 0.03 x 10(-3) m(3).kg(-1).