Lightsources.org

Biological material discovered in Jurassic fossil

2018/12/062018/12/12

Ichthyosaurs were reptiles that roamed the Jurassic oceans 180 million years ago. They are extremely well studied and the form will probably be instantly recognisable from museums and textbooks. They resemble modern toothed whales such as dolphins and this similarity led researchers to hypothesise that the two creatures had similar strategies for survival in the marine environment. However, until now, there was little evidence to support this hypothesis. The research team led by Lund researcher Johan Lindgren went on the search for biological material within fossils to help solve this puzzle. After a lot of preparation in the lab and traveling around the world to perform experiments, they discovered that the fossil contained remnants of smooth skin and subcutaneous blubber. This is compelling evidence that the Ichthyosaurs were indeed warm-blooded and confirms the previous hypothesis. Lindgren showed visible delight when he described how you could see that the 180-million-year-old blubber was indeed visibly flexible after treatment in his laboratory.

Image: MAX IV’s Anders Engdahl was part of a team that published a landmark study about biological tissue found in a Jurassic fossil. The work published this week in Nature is one of the most comprehensive studies of its kind and sheds new light on the life of a prehistoric sea creature.

Tunable ferromagnetism in a 2D material at room temperature

2018/12/052018/12/06

Breakthroughs in next-generation spintronic logic and memory devices could hinge on our ability to control spin behavior in two-dimensional materials—stacks of ultrathin layers held together by relatively weak electrostatic (van der Waals) forces. The reduced dimensionality of these so-called “van der Waals materials” often leads to tunable electronic and magnetic properties, including intrinsic ferromagnetism. However, it remains a challenge to tune this ferromagnetism (e.g. spin orientation, magnetic domain phase, and magnetic long-range order) at ambient temperatures.

In this work, researchers performed a study of Fe₃GeTe₂, a van der Waals material that consists of Fe₃Ge layers alternating with two Te layers. The material’s magnetic properties were characterized using a variety of techniques, including x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) with x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) contrast at Beamline 6.3.1 and photoemission electron microscopy (PEEM) at Beamline 11.0.1.

Image: PEEM images for unpatterned and patterned Fe₃GeTe₂ samples at 110 K and 300 K. The unpatterned samples formed stripe domains at 110 K, which disappeared at 300 K. The patterned samples formed out-of-plane stripe domains at 110 K and transitioned to in-plane vortex states at 300 K, demonstrating control over magnetism at room temperature and beyond.

Capturing the strongest X-ray beam on Earth

2018/11/28

First images of the European XFEL beam

At European XFEL scientists use intense X-rays to take pictures of the smallest particles imaginable. The European XFEL X-ray beam is a billion times brighter than other traditional X-ray sources, but since X-rays are invisible to the naked eye, it is not usually possible to see the X-ray beam. Working together with a professional photographer, scientists at the largest X-ray laser in the world located in Schenefeld near Hamburg, have now managed to capture an image of the intense European XFEL X-ray beam. The pictures were taken as the X-ray beam entered the experiment area in the FXE instrument hutch at the end of a journey that started in a 3.4km long underground tunnel.

On the images published today, the X-ray beam appears as a thin blue stripe. What we are actually seeing, however, is glowing nitrogen molecules which the X-ray beam has caused to light up as it travels through the air thereby interacting with the molecules.

>Read more on the European XFEL website

Image: The European XFEL beam.
Credit: European XFEL

Improving lithium-ion battery capacity

2018/11/272018/11/28

Toward cost-effective solutions for next-generation consumer electronics, electric vehicles and power grids.

The search for a better lithium-ion battery—one that could keep a cell phone working for days, increase the range of electric cars and maximize energy storage on a grid—is an ongoing quest, but a recent study done by Canadian Light Source (CLS) scientists with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) showed that the answer can be found in chemistry.
“People have tried everything at an engineering level to improve batteries,” said Dr. Yaser Abu-Lebdeh, a senior research officer at the NRC, “but to improve their capacity, you have to play with the chemistry of the materials.”

Image: The decomposition of a polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) binder in a high energy battery.
Credit: Jigang Zhou

ESRF celebrates 30 years of science, 30 years of international collaboration

2018/11/272018/11/27

The ESRF celebrates its 30th anniversary in the presence of the representatives of its 22 partner countries. This event looks back at ESRF’s scientific accomplishments but also on the role that the ESRF has played in fostering peaceful cross-border collaboration in Europe and beyond.

“Congratulations on 30 years of success; here is to 30 more to come,” said Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, in a video message.

“ESRF is a shining example of what can be achieved when people of different nationalities and cultures come together to pursue a common goal, to push back the frontiers of science,” said ESRF Director General Francesco Sette. “In drawing up the ESRF Convention, back in 1988, the ESRF’s founding fathers established a unique model for scientific and technological excellence. Today, with 22 partner countries, and by bringing together scientists from all over the world, the ESRF continues to demonstrate how science unites nations and contributes to addressing complex global challenges facing our society.”

2018 holds a particular significance for the ESRF as the facility celebrates its 30th anniversary. In 1988, 11 countries joined forces to create the first third-generation synchrotron light source: a dream became a reality. Thirty years later, the ESRF has broken records for the brilliance and stability of its X-ray beams, for its scientific output (over 32 000 publications, i.e., around 2 000 publications per year during the last ten years, and four Nobel prize laureates), and for the strength of its community of users (about 10 000 scientific visits per year with users from 50 different countries).

PHELIX beamline – undulator installation and hutch construction

2018/11/272018/12/06

The PHELIX beamline construction continues. In October 2018 the light source for the beamline – an undulator – was installed in the storage ring. In November construction of the an optical hutch ended.

The hutch will protect people from radiation hazards. In the near future it will house the first optical components of the beamline.
The next planned steps are the installation of the front-end, i.e. the part of the beamline situated in the storage ring tunnel after the source (January 2019), the installation of the beamline with optical components for X-rays (February-March 2019) and the installation of the end-station (May-June 2019).

The PHELIX beamline will use soft X-rays. Its end station will enable a wide range of spectroscopic and absorption studies characterized by different surface sensitivity. In addition to collecting standard high-resolution spectra, it will allow, for example, to map the band structure in three dimensions and to detect electron spin in three dimensions. Users will, therefore, be able to conduct research on new materials, thin films and multilayers systems, catalysts and biomaterials, surface of bulk compounds, spin polarized surface states, as well as chemical reactions taking place on the surface.

>Read more on the SOLARIS website

Image credit: Agata Chrześcijanek

From Pakistan to Barcelona, from scientists to friends

2018/11/272018/12/18

Shamila Imtiaz and Sidra Ibadat happily describe their experience during their research internship at ALBA within the framework of the Open Sesame European project.

Shamila Imtiaz (31 years old, PhD candidate and Chemistry junior scientist at PINSTECH Islamabad) and Sidra Ibadat (25 years old, MS Physics Student at the International Islamic University Islamabad) happily describe their experience during their research internship at ALBA. They come from Pakistan and have been granted by the H2020 Open Sesame project to spend 8 weeks at our facility in order to widen their expertise in synchrotron-based Fourier Transform Infrared Microspectroscopy SR-FTIRM at the infrared beamline MIRAS. For both of them, this is their first experience in Europe and, apart from their scientific activity, they are enjoying their walks, their talks and taking care of Shamila’s 9-month old baby. Additionally, ALBA is “proud to help in the development of the scientific careers of young mothers here and elsewhere”, says Miguel Ángel García Aranda, ALBA Scientific Director

“The situation in Pakistan has greatly changed in the past years, there are more women than men in science studies but it’s not easy to find funding opportunities to continue with the studies”, says Sidra. “The Open Sesame project has been a great opportunity for us for visiting and seeing how a synchrotron light source works and bring back all this knowledge to our country”, according to Shamila. “Having access to more sophisticated tools that those in Pakistan can boost our research projects”, continues Sidra.

>Read more on the ALBA website

Light-activated, single- ion catalyst breaks down carbon dioxide

2018/11/262018/11/28

X-ray studies reveal structural details that may point the way to designing better catalysts for converting pollutant gas into useful products

A team of scientists has discovered a single-site, visible-light-activated catalyst that converts carbon dioxide (CO₂) into “building block” molecules that could be used for creating useful chemicals. The discovery opens the possibility of using sunlight to turn a greenhouse gas into hydrocarbon fuels.

The scientists used the National Synchrotron Light Source II, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory, to uncover details of the efficient reaction, which used a single ion of cobalt to help lower the energy barrier for breaking down CO₂. The team describes this single-site catalyst in a paper just published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Converting CO₂into simpler parts—carbon monoxide (CO) and oxygen—has valuable real-world applications. “By breaking CO₂, we can kill two birds with one stone—remove CO₂ from the atmosphere and make building blocks for making fuel,” said Anatoly Frenkel, a chemist with a joint appointment at Brookhaven Lab and Stony Brook University. Frenkel led the effort to understand the activity of the catalyst, which was made by Gonghu Li, a physical chemist at the University of New Hampshire.

Image: National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) QAS beamline scientist Steven Ehrlich, Stony Brook University (SBU) graduate student Jiahao Huang, and Brookhaven Lab-SBU joint appointee Anatoly Frenkel at the QAS beamline at NSLS-II.

HZB builds undulator for SESAME in Jordan

2018/11/262018/11/29

The Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin is building an APPLE II undulator for the SESAME synchrotron light source in Jordan. The undulator will be used at the Helmholtz SESAME beamline (HESEB) that will be set up there by five Helmholtz Centres. The Helmholtz Association is investing 3.5 million euros in this project coordinated by DESY.
SESAME stands for “Synchrotron Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East” and provides brilliant X-ray light for research purposes. The third-generation synchrotron radiation source became operational in 2017. Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority, Turkey, and Cyprus are cooperating on this unique project to provide scientists from the Middle East with access to one of the most versatile tools for research.

New beamline for soft x-rays

Thus far, SESAME has four beamlines and will now receive a fifth meant to generate “soft” X-ray light in the energy range between 70 eV and 1800 eV. This X-ray light is particularly suitable for investigating surfaces and interfaces of various materials, for observing certain chemical and electronic processes, and for non-destructive analysis of cultural artefacts. The new beamline will be constructed as the Helmholtz SESAME Beamline (HESEB) by the Helmholtz Centres DESY (coordinating Centre), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) as well as the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

Image: The APPLE II UE56 double undulator generates brilliant light with variable polarization.
Credit: HZB

New research helps pursuit for malaria vaccine

2018/11/212018/11/22

Scientists from The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) identify structure of key malaria protein

Using technology available at the Canadian Light Source synchrotron, SickKids scientists have taken an important step forward on the path to finding effective biomedical interventions to halt the spread of malaria, a disease that affected an estimated 216 million people worldwide in 2016 alone.

Jean-Philippe Julien, a scientist in the Molecular Medicine program at SickKids, and his colleagues focused on a molecule known to be essential for the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum to go through the sexual stages of its lifecycle. Disrupting that stage of the lifecycle has the potential to reduce infections and deaths from malaria because parasite transmission between humans would be blocked by inhibiting parasite development in the Anopheles mosquito.

“The protein we looked at was identified several years ago as an important target for malaria parasite biology,” says Julien, who is also a Canada Research Chair in Structural Immunology and an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Biochemistry and Immunology at the University of Toronto. “The field has tried for over a decade to clarify its structure in order to guide the development of biomedical interventions that can curb the spread of malaria.”

Image: One of the structures of the malaria protein (orange) being recognized by the humanized blocking antibody (green and blue).

First users on VMXm

2018/11/202018/11/22

First users from the University of Southampton investigated proteins involved in nutrient uptake of photosynthetic or cyanobacteria to understand how these phytoplankton thrive under scarce nutrient conditions.

The work has immense global significance for biofuels production and biotechnology. This beamline marks the completion of Diamond’s original Phase III funding on time and within budget.

First users have now been welcomed by Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron light source on its new VMXm beamline. The Versatile Macromolecular Crystallography micro/nanofocus (VMXm) beamline becomes the 32nd operational beamline to open its doors to users, completing the portfolio of seven beamlines dedicated to macromolecular crystallography.
The unique VMXm beamline represents a significant landmark for Diamond. It is a specialist tuneable micro/nanofocus macromolecular crystallography (MX) beamline, with an X-ray beam size of less than 0.5 microns, allowing even the tiniest of samples to be analysed. Integrated into the ‘in vacuum’ sample environment is a scanning electron microscope, making VMXm a hybrid X-ray/cryoEM instrument for detecting and measuring data from nanocrystals. VMXm is aimed at research applications where the production of significant quantities of protein and crystals is difficult.

Image: Principal Beamline Scientist Dr Gwyndaf Evans with his team Dr Jose Trincao, Dr Anna Warren, Dr Emma Beale and Dr Adam Crawshaw. First users – Dr Ivo Tews from Biological Sciences at the University of Southampton and joint Diamond-Southampton PhD student Rachel Bolton investigating proteins involved in nutrient uptake of photosynthetic or cyanobacteria.

Scientists produce 3-D chemical maps of single bacteria

2018/11/162018/11/19

Researchers at NSLS-II used ultrabright x-rays to generate 3-D nanoscale maps of a single bacteria’s chemical composition with unparalleled spatial resolution.

Scientists at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II)—a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory—have used ultrabright x-rays to image single bacteria with higher spatial resolution than ever before. Their work, published in Scientific Reports, demonstrates an x-ray imaging technique, called x-ray fluorescence microscopy (XRF), as an effective approach to produce 3-D images of small biological samples.

“For the very first time, we used nanoscale XRF to image bacteria down to the resolution of a cell membrane,” said Lisa Miller, a scientist at NSLS-II and a co-author of the paper. “Imaging cells at the level of the membrane is critical for understanding the cell’s role in various diseases and developing advanced medical treatments.”
The record-breaking resolution of the x-ray images was made possible by the advanced capabilities of the Hard X-ray Nanoprobe (HXN) beamline, an experimental station at NSLS-II with novel nanofocusing optics and exceptional stability.
“HXN is the first XRF beamline to generate a 3-D image with this kind of resolution,” Miller said.

Image: NSLS-II scientist Tiffany Victor is shown at the Hard X-ray Nanoprobe, where her team produced 3-D chemical maps of single bacteria with nanoscale resolution.

LEAPS holds its first plenary meeting

2018/11/162018/11/26

Synchrotron radiation source SESAME welcomed as associated partner

On 12 and 13 November, the League of European Accelerator-based Photon Sources (LEAPS), the association of European research lightsources, met at DESY for its first plenary meeting. More than 150 scientists from the 16 accelerator-based lightsources in Europe, which are members of LEAPS, travelled to Hamburg to do so. Among them were the directors of all institutions, representatives of eight national science ministries and research funding agencies as well as Philippe Froissard from the European Commission.

“The League of European Accelerator-based Photon Sources has made great progress since its foundation a year ago, and I am convinced that this is the way to make our science with European lightsources shine even brighter in the future,” said Helmut Dosch, Chairperson of LEAPS, who opened the meeting together with LEAPS Vice-Chairperson Caterina Biscari from the Spanish synchrotron radiation source ALBA. The LEAPS consortium represents the interests of more than 25 000 users in total.
>Read more on the DESY website
and another article on the ALBA website. Please find here all news about the LEAPS initiative.

Ceremony marks the first stage of the Sirius project

2018/11/162018/11/29

New Synchrotron Light Source is the largest and most complex research structure ever built in Brazil

The Brazilian President, Michel Temer, and the Minister of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communications, Gilberto Kassab, participated on Wednesday 14th November in the ceremony commemorating the first stage of the new Brazilian Synchrotron Light Source, Sirius, in the Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM), in Campinas (SP). Started in 2012, Sirius is the largest project in Brazilian science, a state-of-the-art research infrastructure, strategic for cutting-edge scientific research and for finding solutions to global problems in areas such as health, agriculture, energy and the environment.

This first stage includes the conclusion of the construction works of the building that houses the entire research infrastructure, in addition to the assembly of the Linear and Booster Accelerators. The Storage Ring is currently being assembled.
The delivery of the next stage of the project, scheduled for the second half of 2019, includes the start of the Sirius operation and the opening of the first six beamlines for researchers. The complete project includes seven other beamlines, expected to be opened in 2021. However, the number of beamlines can be gradually expanded, reaching up to 40 experimental stations.

X-ray fluorescence imaging could open up new diagnostic possibilities in medicine

2018/11/162018/11/29

Using gold to track down diseases

A high-precision X-ray technique, tested at PETRA III, could catch cancer at an earlier stage and facilitate the development and control of pharmaceutical drugs. The test at DESY’s synchrotron radiation source, which used so-called X-ray fluorescence for that purpose, has proved very promising, as is now being reported in the journal Scientific Reports by a research team headed by Florian Grüner from the University of Hamburg. The technique is said to offer the prospect of carrying out such X-ray studies not only with higher precision than existing methods but also with less of a dose impact. However, before the method can be used in a clinical setting, it still has to undergo numerous stages of development.

The idea behind the procedure is simple: tiny nanoparticles of gold having a diameter of twelve nanometres (millionths of a millimetre) are functionalised with antibodies using biochemical methods. “A solution containing such nanoparticles is injected into the patient,” explains Grüner, a professor of physics at the Centre for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL), a cooperative venture between DESY, the University of Hamburg and the Max Planck Society. “The particles migrate through the body, where the antibodies can latch onto a tumour that may be present.” When the corresponding parts of the patient’s body are scanned using a pencil X-ray beam, the gold particles emit characteristic X-ray fluorescence signals, which are recorded by a special detector. The hope is that this will permit the detection of tiny tumours that cannot be found using current methods.

Image: Gold nanoparticles spiked with antibodies can specifically attach to tumors or other targets in the organism and can be detected there by X-ray fluorescence.
Credit: Meletios Verras [Source]

Transition metal complexes: mixed works better

2018/11/162018/11/16

A team at BESSY II has investigated how various iron-complex compounds process energy from incident light. They were able to show why certain compounds have the potential to convert light into electrical energy.

The results are important for the development of organic solar cells. The study has now been published in the journal PCCP, and its illustration selected for the cover.
Transition-metal complexes – that is a cumbersome word for a class of molecules with important properties: An element from the group of transition metals sits in the centre. The outer electrons of the transition-metal atom are located in cloverleaf-like extended d-orbitals that can be easily influenced by external excitation. Some transition-metal complexes act as catalysts to accelerate certain chemical reactions, and others can even convert sunlight into electricity. The well-known dye solar cell developed by Michael Graetzel (EPFL) in the 1990s is based on a ruthenium complex.

Why not Iron?
However, it has not yet been possible to replace the rare and expensive transition metal ruthenium with a less expensive element, such as iron. This is astonishing, because the same number of electrons is found on extended outer d-orbitals of iron. However, excitation with light from the visible region does not release long-lived charge carriers in most of the iron complex compounds investigated so far.

Image: The illustration shows a molecule with an iron atom at its centre, bound to 4 CN groups and a bipyridine molecule. The highest occupied iron orbital is shown as a green-red cloud. As soon as a cyan group is present, the outer iron orbitals are observed to delocalize so that electrons are also densely present around the nitrogen atoms.
Credit: T. Splettstoesser/HZB