Industrial clients at ESRF fast-track drug discovery

Industrial clients at ESRF fast-track drug discovery

Researchers from the company Idorsia Pharmaceuticals Ltd have rapidly optimized a weak hit compound against SARS-CoV-2 to increase its potency by 1000-fold. They used artificial intelligence, computational chemistry, high throughput chemistry and structural biology at the ESRF. The results are out in Journal of Medicinal Chemistry and show the strong collaboration between the ESRF and industry.

It all started with a molecule that bound weakly to the SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19. “About two year ago, we had identified this molecule, a diazepane scaffold, through artificial intelligence and computational screening and thought we would investigate further”, explains Julien Hazemann, first author of the publication and former researcher at Idorsia. The compound could potentially inhibit the virus’s main protease (Mpro)—a critical enzyme for viral replication.

In order to increase the efficiency of the molecule, so that it would bind to Mpro, the team from Idorsia used computational simulations, high-throughput chemistry and structural biology at the ESRF in collaboration with the company Expose GmbH. This approach, called hit-to-lead optimisation, has been used in antiviral drug discovery in the last ten years, but it is the first time that the techniques were integrated in such a tight and effective way in a global effort.  

First, the researchers employed computational docking and molecular dynamics simulations to predict how structural changes to the molecule might improve binding to Mpro.

Using high-throughput medicinal chemistry, they synthesized and tested a focused library of analogues. These steps led to a dramatic improvement of the original compound to a nearly 1,000-fold increase in potency.

However, predicting how a molecule behaves computationally was only one piece of the puzzle. Throughout the process, the researchers came to the ESRF’s macromolecular crystallography beamline ID23-1 to collect high-resolution X-ray diffraction data of the Mpro–inhibitor complexes. They were able to visualise how the inhibitor binds within the active site of the protease. “The ESRF has been crucial in this research, from the beginning, when we scanned the candidate compound, to the end, when we saw how the action takes place”, explains Daniel Ritz, senior director of biology at Idorsia.

One of the features of this study is the small number of compounds they needed, thanks to the highly targeted methodology the scientists used.

Read more on ESRF website

Structure of next-generation catalysts

Structure of next-generation catalysts

In a study published in Molecular Catalysis researchers from West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin, Warsaw University of Technology, Graz University of Technology, and National Synchrotron Radiation Centre SOLARIS explored the structure of next-generation catalysts for ammonia synthesis. Only the combination of standard laboratory measurements with possibilities of synchrotron XANES/EXAFS allowed understanding mechanisms leading to the active form of the synthesised material.

To meet the demand from agriculture, the ammonia industry consumes ca. 2% of world energy production, which is a consequence of the high temperature (400-500°C) and high pressure (10-30 MPa) required for the Haber-Bosch process ongoing on widely used iron-based catalysts. The development of new-generation catalysts is essential to lower the operating costs and reduce the CO2 emission of this process. Ammonia is also positioned as a potential form of synthetic fuel of the future. As a result, research and development initiatives focusing on the production of so-called green ammonia, which is produced using hydrogen from water electrolysis powered by renewable energy sources, are gaining momentum.


Development of the new catalyst is high-throughput work, based on screening tests, which allow for the selection of e.g. the optimal carrier, deposition method of the active phase, and load of the active phase. After several dozens of tests, we have designed a promising new catalyst, obtained by impregnation of the γ-Al2O3 with the cobalt and molybdenum compounds, followed by the activation process. The catalytic activity and stability of the obtained catalysts, tested in a laboratory fixed bed reactor under atmospheric pressure at 500 °C, were promising compared to the reference state-of-art Co3Mo3N and the commercial iron-based catalyst. However, the determination of the active phase structure, necessary to fully understand the nature of the catalyst, with standard laboratory methods was ambiguous. Thus, selected obtained catalysts were examined with the help of powerful synchrotron XANES/EXAFS measurements at the ASTRA beamline. 

Read more on SOLARIS website

Image: Scheme of the catalyst synthesis protocol including wet impregnation of support and activation of precursor in ammonia, resulting in highly active and stable catalyst.

Critical raw materials from electrolysers back into the cycle

Critical raw materials from electrolysers back into the cycle

Researchers succeed in recycling functional materials for hydrogen production

Hydrogen plays a central role in the energy transition. The gas is mainly produced with the help of electrolysers. This process requires critical raw materials such as platinum group metals, rare earths or nickel as catalysts. Researchers at the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology (HIF), an institute of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), have now been able to recover these functional materials using innovative flotation processes and liquid-liquid particle separation, thus returning them to the material cycle. The research is part of the H2Giga lead project of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), which is investigating the longevity and recyclability of hydrogen electrolysers.

Hydrogen is considered a clean energy source that can help reduce CO2 emissions. The focus here is particularly on green hydrogen, which is produced through the electrolysis of water using renewable energies such as wind and solar power. Hydrogen is used in industry, for example as a raw material for the production of chemicals and steel, as well as in the transport sector, where it is used as a fuel for fuel cell vehicles. Hydrogen can also be used to store surplus energy from renewable sources, making it an important building block for a sustainable and climate-friendly energy future. According to the national hydrogen strategy, Germany is expected to need 95 to 135 terawatt hours of hydrogen in 2030.

Various processes can be used to produce hydrogen – one is water electrolysis: water is broken down into hydrogen and oxygen using an electric current. The catalysts in the electrolyser consist of critical metals, the so-called functional materials. Proton exchange membrane electrolysers (PEM) mainly use metals from the platinum group, such as platinum, iridium and palladium. High-temperature electrolysers use rare earths and nickel. These critical raw materials need to be secured. This is a project that HIF researchers are working on under the leadership of the TU Bergakademie Freiberg in the ReNaRe project.

ReNaRe stands for Recycling – Sustainable Resource Utilization and is part of the H2Giga flagship project. To implement the national hydrogen strategy, the BMBF has set up three flagship projects for Germany’s entry into the hydrogen economy. One of these is H2Giga, which focuses on the series production of hydrogen electrolysers. ReNaRe concentrates on the end of life of electrolysers in order to return the materials used, and in particular the critical metals, to the material cycle.

“We are involved in the recycling of PEM and high-temperature electrolysers, as they are easy to dismantle. We use ultra-fine particle separation techniques to recover the functional materials. This is because the critical anode and cathode materials are present as fine particles. Their size corresponds to approximately one hundredth of a human hair. Liquid-liquid particle separation and agglomeration flotation have proven to be suitable for separating the functional materials. The extraction of ultrafine particles uses a sustainable solvent-water circulation system for the effective separation of hydrophobic, i.e. water-repellent cathode catalysts and hydrophilic (water-attracting) anode catalysts. The complementary agglomeration flotation uses an innovative, sustainable hydrophobic binder to enable agglomeration of the particles into a uniform mass. The binder is based on a special emulsion technology, i.e. an oil-water mixture with a very high water content, which selectively agglomerates hydrophobic ultrafine particles. This enables the separation of hydrophilic ultrafine particles by adhesion to gas bubbles and discharge in the foam,” says Sohyun Ahn, PhD student at the HIF, describing the procedure. “With both processes, we were able to recover up to 90 percent of the critical functional materials and return them to the material cycle. An important step towards operating hydrogen electrolysis economically and sustainably.”

Read more on HZDR website

Image: Water drop (black) above a hydrophobic particle (grey are at the bottom)

Source: Ahn, Sohyun

Unraveling iron uptake and magnetosome formation in magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense

Unraveling iron uptake and magnetosome formation in magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense

Diamond Light Source sheds light on bacterial biomineralisation processes

Iron plays several essential roles in bacteria, making it a crucial element for their survival and function. In magnetotactic bacteria like Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense, iron plays a central role in the formation of magnetosomes. These peculiar bacteria possess the capability to orient themselves along the Earth’s magnetic field lines, thanks to the presence of a very specific type of intracellular magnetic nanoparticles called magnetosomes. Magnetosomes are mainly composed of magnetite crystals (Fe3O4) enveloped in a lipidic membrane. Some mechanisms such as the internalisation and the transformation of iron into magnetite crystals are still poorly understood. In an article recently published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, a team of researchers from Aston University investigated the formation of these magnetosomes in bacteria by finely tuning the concentration of oxygen and iron. They performed CryoSIM and CryoSXT experiments on the B24 beamline. The team were also the first to exploit the recent development of the beamline to measure X-ray absorption data at the Iron L3 edge to aid visualisation of the magnetsomes.

Advancing understanding of bacterial magnetosome formation

Magnetosome formation in magnetotactic bacteria is a complex process influenced by environmental factors such as iron concentration and oxygen levels. Prior studies provided foundational knowledge but lacked the resolution to observe these processes at the single-cell level under near-native conditions. Given the small size of magnetosomes, which can range from 30 nm to 120 nm across different species, electron microscopy is one of the most common used imaging techniques. However, this approach does not enable simultaneous tracking of intracellular iron content alongside magnetosome content to understand better how the biomineralisation process works. This research aimed to bridge that gap by employing an integrated approach combining correlative light and X-ray microscopy with other analytical techniques.

Firstly, the data obtained from these other analytical techniques suggested a potential correlation between the intracellular iron pool and magnetosome content. Specifically, increased iron availability under microaerobic conditions appeared to result in longer magnetosome chains and higher intracellular iron concentrations. To further investigate and validate this hypothesis at the single-cell level, the researchers conducted experiments at the B24 beamline at Diamond.

Utilising Diamond Light Source for advanced imaging

Cryo-SXT is a powerful technique used to observe the internal structure of biological samples in a near-native state. This technique uses soft-X rays to obtain three-dimensional (3D) tomograms of biological specimens with a resolution of up to 25 nm, without the need for traditional sample preparation methods that could damage cellular structures (such as drying, chemical fixation, staining). On B24, the team was able to observe internal compartments, including magnetosomes, using the preferential absorption of carbon atoms in the cell. With cryoSIM, they stained the bacteria with PG-SK, a green fluorophore that reacts with the intracellular iron. The strength of the B24 beamline is that scientists were able to analyse the same region of interest in the same samples with both CryoSIM and CryoSXT and correlate the data.

This approach provided compelling evidence of a correlation between the intracellular iron concentration and the number of magnetosomes. Another advantage of using soft X-ray microscopy at B24 is the ability to adjust the X-ray energy to the iron absorption edge. As iron atoms strongly absorb X-rays at this energy, it facilitates the observation of magnetosomes within the bacteria. By modifying the iron concentration during bacterial growth, the researchers demonstrated that these bacteria can tolerate high extracellular iron concentrations. They also identified an iron threshold beyond which increasing the extracellular iron concentration no longer leads to additional iron uptake or an increase in magnetosome production.

Read more on Diamond website

Arctic fossils reveal world’s oldest salmon and carp relatives

Arctic fossils reveal world’s oldest salmon and carp relatives

Most people picture the time of dinosaurs as a steamy, tropical world. But during the Late Cretaceous period, northern Alaska was a different kind of wild. Located far above the Arctic Circle, it endured months of winter darkness and freezing temperatures – even as much of the planet remained warm. Think sub-Arctic Canada today: cold, wet and seasonal.

A diverse, international team of scientists has now uncovered a remarkable discovery: the world’s oldest known relatives of salmon and carp lived in this extreme environment.

Using the latest in 3D imaging technology, Lisa Van Loon and Neil Banerjee from Western and their collaborators analyzed fossilized fish bones found in the rocks of the Prince Creek Formation in Alaska to reveal a previously undiscovered polar ecosystem. The findings were published May 7 in the journal Papers in Paleontology.

“The synchrotron allowed us to virtually reconstruct these fish in 3D, bone by bone. It’s an incredible example of how modern imaging tools are unlocking secrets from the deep past.”— Lisa Van Loon, adjunct research professor, Western

Last Updated: 

“These discoveries suggest this remote region may have been an evolutionary launchpad for fish that now dominate northern rivers and lakes worldwide,” said Van Loon, adjunct research professor in the departments of Earth sciences and anthropology at Western.

Some of the fossils discovered in Alaska were barely larger than a pin head and were deeply embedded in rock. Traditional fossil preparation, which involves carefully removing surrounding sediment by hand, wasn’t an option; the specimens were simply too fragile.

Using synchrotron micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) scanning technology at the Advanced Proton Source, with support from the Canadian Light Source, researchers scanned the fossil-bearing rocks without physically disturbing them. The ultra-bright, high-resolution X-ray beams allowed them to digitally reconstruct the anatomy of these ancient fish in 3D, revealing intricate structures such as jaws, teeth and fin rays in remarkable detail.

“Many of these fossils were so delicate and deeply encased in rock that traditional preparation would have destroyed them,” said Banerjee, an Earth sciences professor at Western. “Using synchrotron micro-CT scanning, we were able to peer inside the rock in extraordinary detail – resolving tiny jaw bones and teeth without laying a chisel on them. This technology has completely transformed how we study ancient life.”

The scans made it possible to identify entirely new species, some of which represent the earliest-known members of fish groups that today dominate northern rivers and lakes, such as salmon, carp and pike.

Sivulliusalmo alaskensis, meaning “first salmon of Alaska” in Iñupiaq, is now the earliest known member of the salmon family, eclipsing previous records by nearly 10 million years. The earliest known cypriniform, part of the same group as today’s minnows and carp, was also found, marking its first appearance in North America (as they were previously only found in Asia and Europe).

Newly found species of pike-like fish also lived at Prince Creek Formation, some 73 million years ago, including Archaeosiilik gilmulli and Nunikuluk gracilis, as they successfully adapted to the Arctic’s long winters. Sharks like Squatina (a relative of angel sharks), sturgeon and paddlefish, were also revealed within the fossil samples.

“The synchrotron allowed us to virtually reconstruct these fish in 3D, bone by bone,” said Van Loon. “It’s an incredible example of how modern imaging tools are unlocking secrets from the deep past.”

Read more on CLS website

What will it take to bring fusion energy to the US power grid?

What will it take to bring fusion energy to the US power grid?

In this Q&A, Arianna Gleason discusses the technologies needed to make commercialized fusion energy a reality and how SLAC is advancing this energy frontier. 

By Erin Woodward

Arianna Gleason is an award-winning scientist at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory who studies matter in its most extreme forms – from roiling magma in the center of our planet to the conditions inside the heart of distant stars. During Fusion Energy Week, we caught up with Gleason about the current state of fusion energy research and how SLAC is helping push the field forward. 

What is fusion energy? 

Fusion is at the heart of every star. The tremendous pressure and temperature at the center of a star fuses atoms together, creating many of the elements you see on the periodic table and generating an immense amount of energy. Fusion is exciting, because it could provide unlimited energy to our power grid. We’re trying to replicate fusion energy here on Earth, though it’s a tremendous challenge of science and engineering. 

Have we ever been able to replicate fusion in a lab? 

Fusion has been at the forefront of scientific inquiry for many decades, but it wasn’t until December 2022 that we reached an incredible watershed moment in fusion research. Using a technique called inertial fusion energy, or IFE, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) focused 192 individual lasers on a fuel “target” – about the size of a pea – made of deuterium and tritium. These lasers applied a tremendous force onto the target, and it imploded into a burning plasma. The deuterium and tritium atoms fused together, generating helium and a neutron and producing more energy from the reaction than was used to create it. For less than a trillionth of a second, researchers created the center of a star on Earth. After more than 50 years of fusion research, the world finally achieved net energy gain. 

That’s incredible, but – a trillionth of a second? That seems pretty short. 

Very short! The idea is that this process – this burning plasma – can be repeated many times per second, driven by a series of laser shots that create a source of power. Think of it like a car engine: A spark (the laser) ignites the fuel (the fusion fuel target), which only burns for a short time, but repeated cycles of ignition and burning drive sustained power. In the case of inertial fusion energy, this would be the equivalent of a one million horsepower engine.

Right now, the NIF produces one or two shots each day. We’re trying to go from one shot each day to multiple shots each second. If we can orchestrate these implosions multiple times a second, we can generate a continuous flow of power – and do so in a way that is safe, carbon-free and at a scale that meets the long-term energy demands of our world. 

Now that we know fusion is possible on Earth, how far are we from having this unlimited energy source on our national power grid? 

There are numerous barriers we need to overcome before commercialized fusion energy is a reality. As I said before, we need to move from one laser shot each day to something on the order of 10 shots per second. High repetition rate is critical. Beyond that, we need to develop the technology to deliver the fuel targets into the fusion chamber, track their movements and engage them with lasers at the same rate – 10 times per second. The third challenge is designing the targets themselves to ensure they fuse and generate energy every single time. Right now, our understanding of the physics and materials science of these targets is at an early stage – a very low technology readiness level. 

Even more foundationally, we need people. We need to be training up experts at every level – from power plant operators, technicians and electricians to PhDs in science and engineering. These are good jobs that can be domestically sourced. We need to be educating the workforce, at all levels, for power plant design and operation.

What is SLAC doing to address these challenges? 

SLAC is furthering fusion energy science and technology in several ways, including in partnership with other national labs, universities and private companies. 

One significant opportunity is the challenge of high repetition rates – moving from one laser shot per day to 10 shots every second. SLAC has years of experience on exactly this topic. We are home to the only domestic X-ray free electron laser, the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), and its cutting-edge experimental end stations. We’re leveraging these facilities to build up the capabilities for high-repetition laser-target interactions. 

Read more on SLAC website

Catalyst Degradation Mechanisms in CO₂ Electrolysers

Catalyst Degradation Mechanisms in CO₂ Electrolysers

A new suite of operando X-ray techniques enables scientists to track the evolution of elemental and structural changes associated with catalyst and electrode degradation in carbon dioxide electrolysers in an unprecedented manner, all at once, thanks to a collaboration between Technical University of Denmark (DTU), the ESRF and the electrolyser company Twelve.

Converting carbon dioxide (CO₂) into valuable chemicals through electrolysis offers a promising way to make use of excess CO₂ emissions from industrial processes. Among the various technologies being explored, membrane–electrode assembly (MEA)-based systems stand out for their efficiency and scalability, making them strong candidates for future industrial applications to make artificial fuels or CO₂-to-CO conversion. However, MEAs’ long-term stability remains a key challenge, and the degradation mechanisms of catalysts and electrodes in MEAs are not yet understood.

So far, researchers have achieved CO production at current densities over 1 A/cm² and device stability lasting more than 3,000 hours. These advances are fueling commercial interest—but also highlight a new challenge: long-term testing under standard conditions is too slow to support fast development. “The performance of a CO₂ electrolysis can be determined in an hour, but 100s of hours are now needed for stability analysis.  The lack of a more efficient durability testing procedure is hampering our ability to most effectively use R&D resources”, says Brian Seger, professor at DTU and co-corresponding author of the publication. And first author Qiucheng Xu adds: “We need accelerated methods to mimic long-term operation and gain similar insights in a shorter timeframe.”

New characterization platform

The team from DTU, Twelve and the ESRF have now set up a new synchrotron X-ray characterization platform to track the time- and space-resolved evolution of ions and water movement, crystal structure, and catalyst variations in MEAs during accelerated testing. “This challenging problem must be tackled from various perspectives. We have developed a strong combination of operando X-ray techniques and chemical analyses, which can reveal the true complexity of the degradation mechanisms”, says Jakub Drnec, scientist in charge of beamline ID31, where the new suite of techniques take place, and co-corresponding author of the publication.

Specifically, they use Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering (WAXS), small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) techniques on beamline ID31, all at once. The combined analysis of WAXS and SAXS enables the observation of the dynamic evolution of catalyst particle, allowing for differentiation between particle ripening and agglomeration. The inclusion of XRF facilitates monitoring of the cation distribution, which provides insight into whether cation concentration contributes to device operation and degradation.

The combination of these three techniques allows the researchers to more accurately isolate key physical phenomena, thereby bridging the gap between fundamental science and practical applications.

The team used gold and silver nanoparticle catalysts to test their new methodology. The results show that catalyst crystalline phase stability and nanoparticles-substrate adhesion strength are the key factors governing catalyst durability during CO₂ electrolysis.

Read more on ESRF website

World record attosecond measurement at SwissFEL

World record attosecond measurement at SwissFEL

As scientists push X-ray free electron lasers into the attosecond regime, diagnostic tools with higher precision are needed. Now scientists at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have demonstrated the ability to characterise pulses as short as 300 attoseconds: a world record time-resolution using electron-beam streaking.

X-ray free electron lasers such as SwissFEL generate short and powerful pulses of X-ray light that allow scientists to study atomic and molecular processes in action. Scientists are now striving to generate shorter and shorter pulses to access attosecond timescales (10-18 s) and observe the motion of electrons in real time.

Capturing such ultrafast processes with X-rays requires not only attosecond pulses; it also requires ways to precisely characterise the X-rays. “You need to know exactly how long each pulse lasts for and when the brightest parts of the pulse hit, for example,” says Eduard Prat, scientist in the beam dynamics group at SwissFEL. “For many scientific applications, if you don’t have this information, you’re blind.” 

A team from PSI has recently demonstrated that the PolariX – a type of radiofrequency deflector device developed by PSI in collaboration with CERN and the German research centre DESY – can meet the ambitious requirements of attosecond science. 

The electrons tell the story of the X-rays they made.

To create the X-ray light in the SwissFEL, bunches of electrons are accelerated to close to the speed of light and wiggled in a series of magnets called undulators, whereby they emit intense bursts of photons – the X-ray pulses. 

At attosecond timescales, it’s difficult to measure the properties of these pulse directly in a reliable way. X-rays interact only weakly with matter, and traditional sensors aren’t fast enough to resolve attosecond-scale events. Instead, scientists can study the electrons that produced them. 

Sitting after the undulators, the PolariX measures the electron bunch after they’ve released their photons. The device bends the beam using a radiofrequency field, spreading out the electrons depending on their exact arrival time – a method known as electron beam streaking. From the spread, the length of each individual electron bunch can be measured.

When the electrons emit photons (in technical terms, they ‘lase’), they lose energy. By measuring this energy difference, and how it is spread at the parts of the electron beam that lase, PolariX provides information on the X-ray pulse, in particular how its intensity varies over time.

A #MadeAtPSI success story

Although electron streaking is a relatively well-established technique for X-ray pulse characterisation, what makes PolariX unusual is that it can streak in any direction, helping to fully characterise the electron bunch – a concept invented at CERN and realised thanks to the radiofrequency technology at PSI. In contrast, most other devices only streak in one direction, giving limited information about the electron beam. 

During the last seven years of development at PSI, the PolariX has become one of the world leading devices for this purpose. Five devices are in operation at DESY in Germany, with whom the device was developed, and the team at PSI is currently in discussion with other institutes worldwide to provide them with their RF technologies.

“Pretty much all of the systems and components of PolariX were made at PSI,” says Paolo Craievich, who leads the RF systems group at PSI. “Over the course of PolariX’s development, we have become very experienced, and now we are leading in the world. I’m very proud for the whole RF section – it’s the work from many different people.” 

Read more on PSI website

Image: Eduard Prat (left) and Paolo Craievich in SwissFEL – proud of the teamwork that has now led to a world record time-resolution in X-ray pulse measurement using electron-beam streaking. © Paul Scherrer Institute PSI/Mahir Dzambegovic

Credit: Paul Scherrer Institute PSI/Mahir Dzambegovic

Scientists Reveal Hidden Interface in Superconducting Qubit Material

Scientists Reveal Hidden Interface in Superconducting Qubit Material

The metal-substrate interface determines atomic structure and could affect qubit performance

UPTON, N.Y. — Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have uncovered an unexpected interface layer that may be hindering the performance of superconducting qubits, the building blocks of quantum computers. While examining this layer through a combination of imaging techniques and theoretical models, they discovered the underlying cause of puzzling structural differences in qubits.

The unexpected layer is called a metal-substrate interface, or M-S interface, because it lies between a layer of tantalum metal and a sapphire substrate. Researchers from the Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage (C2QA), a DOE National Quantum Information Science Research Center led by Brookhaven Lab, have fabricated high-performing superconducting qubits made up of a tantalum thin film deposited on a sapphire substrate. But to unlock the potential power of quantum computers, qubits must exhibit a higher “coherence time,” meaning they need to retain quantum information for longer.

Quantum researchers have dedicated significant efforts to determining which constituent materials and fabrication techniques yield qubits with the highest coherence times. But there are several other elements of qubit architecture that could also affect coherence times. For example, when a qubit is exposed to air, the surface-level tantalum reacts with oxygen. This results in a tantalum oxide layer on the surface of the qubit, and C2QA researchers have found that the interface between this oxide layer and the tantalum thin film hinders the qubit performance. They’ve even explored coating tantalum to prevent the oxidation from occurring.

“We knew that the interface between tantalum oxide and tantalum had a pretty big effect on the performance of qubits made with tantalum thin films,” explained Aswin kumar Anbalagan, a researcher at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) and first author on the recent Advanced Science publication. “That led us to question whether the other interface, the one between the tantalum and the sapphire, was also affecting qubit performance.”

Thinner samples, deeper insights: probing the M-S interface

The high-performing superconducting qubits fabricated by C2QA researchers are typically between 150 and 200 nanometers thick. Though they are incredibly thin — for context, a human hair is 80,000-100,000 nanometers wide — they are too thick to characterize with certain X-ray techniques.

Anbalagan and his mentors at NSLS-II wanted to explore the region where the tantalum metal meets the sapphire substrate, so they partnered with researchers from the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) to fabricate thinner samples — around 30 nanometers thick — made from the same materials as traditional qubits.

“At CFN, we have developed a technique to fabricate high-quality tantalum thin films for quantum circuitry applications,” said Mingzhao Liu, senior scientist at CFN and co-author on the paper. “In this case, we adopted the same technique to fabricate tantalum films that are much thinner, with a very smooth surface and interface against sapphire.” NSLS-II and CFN are DOE Office of Science user facilities at Brookhaven Lab.

“We started with some reasonably straightforward measurements at NSLS-II to see the interface below the tantalum thin film,” said Andrew L. Walter, a lead beamline scientist in NSLS-II’s electronic structure techniques program and one of the lead authors on the paper.

The researchers conducted X-ray reflectivity experiments at the Beamline for Materials Measurement (BMM). These studies offered insights into the thickness and density of each layer in the sample. They also leveraged the Spectroscopy Soft and Tender 2 (SST-2) beamline to take X-ray spectroscopy measurements that revealed the chemical makeup of the layers. The BMM and SST-2 beamlines at NSLS-II are funded and operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Read more on BNL website

Image: Brookhaven Lab researchers discovered an unexpected interface layer between a tantalum (Ta) thin film and the sapphire substrate it was grown on. To better understand this metal-substrate interface, the team conducted several techniques, like scanning transmission electron microscopy (top right circle), and collaborated with researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, who carried out computational simulations (bottom right circle). This research, conducted as part of the Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage, revealed that the concentration of oxygen atoms (O) at the sapphire’s surface influences the direction of tantalum’s deposition. Aluminum (Al) is a core component of sapphire, in addition to oxygen.

Credit: Nathan Johnson | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

BESSY II: Insight into ultrafast spin processes with femtoslicing

BESSY II: Insight into ultrafast spin processes with femtoslicing

An international team has succeeded at BESSY II for the first time to elucidate how ultrafast spin-polarised current pulses can be characterised by measuring the ultrafast demagnetisation in a magnetic layer system within the first hundreds of femtoseconds. The findings are useful for the development of spintronic devices that enable faster and more energy-efficient information processing and storage. The collaboration involved teams from the University of Strasbourg, HZB, Uppsala University and several other universities.

Spintronic components are not based on moving charges, but on changes in the orientation of magnetic moments, such as electron spins. Spin-current-based devices can therefore operate extremely quickly, currently on time scales of up to one hundred picoseconds (one picosecond is 10-12 s). However, the microscopic processes themselves run much faster, in the range of a few hundred femtoseconds (1 fs = 10-15 s).

Magnetic layers form a spin valve

Now, an international team led by Prof. Christine Boeglin, University of Strasbourg, has been able to experimentally observe some of these particularly interesting dynamic processes in a magnetic layer system for the first time. They investigated a so-called spin valve consisting of alternating layers of platinum-cobalt and an iron-gadolinium alloy layer. In this system, interactions between excited (hot) electrons and magnetic layers are particularly strong. First author Deeksha Gupta and her colleagues conducted the experiments at the femtoslicing station at BESSY II together with the HZB team that is operating this worldwide unique infrastructure.

With a femtosecond infrared laser (IR), they generated hot electrons (HE) in a platinum (Pt) top layer. A thick copper layer (Cu, 60 nm) ensures that only HE pulses reach the Co/Pt layer at the front of the spin valve, which acted as a spin polariser, generating spin-polarised HE pulses (SPHE).

Read more on HZB website

Image: The scheme shows (from left to right): Hot electrons generated by a laser in platinum (light blue), the copper (yellow) is used to block the laser pulse so that only the hot electrons propagate and transport a spin current through the magnetic spin valve structure of cobalt platinum (blue-brown) and iron gadolinium (green).

Credit: D. Gupta /HZB

A superlative milestone

A superlative milestone

PSI spin-off Araris Biotech AG is being acquired by the multinational pharmaceutical company Taiho Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. The total value of the deal comes to USD 1.14 billion – making Araris the first PSI spin-off to achieve the exclusive unicorn-level!

The deal includes an initial payment  of $400 million and milestone payments of a further $740 million, bringing the total deal size to $1.14 billion. Contract structures like this are typical for the acquisition of companies in the biotech sector. The term ‘unicorn’ is used in the business world to describe something very special: a start-up that has achieved a valuation of over 1 billion US dollars.

With this deal, the start-up Araris, which was spun out of the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI in 2019, will now be fully acquired by Taiho Pharmaceutical Co. The total value of this acquisition confirms the innovative potential of Araris’ therapeutic approach, which aims to improve the efficacy and tolerability of cancer therapies.

Araris Biotech AG develops novel antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) for the targeted treatment of cancer. The company was founded by Philipp Spycher, building on research carried out at PSI’s Center for Radiopharmaceutical Sciences. Spycher developed a method that allows cytotoxic agents to be bound to antibodies more firmly than before. In this technology, the antibody delivers the drug specifically to the diseased tissue, where it destroys the tumour cells. This work led to several patent applications and PSI’s own funding programme “PSI Founder Fellowship” supported him as he refined his research and developed a business idea. The concept convinced notable investors. Hence, the acquisition is a huge success not only for Araris Biotech AG, but also for PSI.

The technology transfer team at PSI supported Spycher on his journey from “researcher to entrepreneur” and ultimately helped him set up the spin-off Araris Biotech AG. PSI promotes spin-offs and with them the commercialisation of know-how and technologies developed at PSI that benefit society in the form of new products or services. “Spin-off companies are of strategic importance to PSI, because they bring the know-how gathered here to the market very efficiently, increase the visibility of PSI and contribute to strengthening the Swiss economy,” says John Millard, Head of Technology Transfer at PSI. Successful spin-offs also strengthen the innovative power of the Canton of Aargau and create new jobs. 

Read more on PSI website

Image: Araris Biotech AG develops novel antibody-drug conjugates for the targeted treatment of cancer. Shown here: an antibody-drug conjugate attached to two active drugs. The Araris technology allows the two drugs (orange and blue) to be attached to the antibody (turquoise) simultaneously by means of the so-called linker (yellow).

Credit: Araris Biotech AG

Diamond hosts Lightsources.org in-person meeting in UK

Diamond hosts Lightsources.org in-person meeting in UK

Last week, science communicators from the across the US, Europe, Middle East and Asia met in person at Diamond Light Source at Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire, UK from Wednesday 23rd to Friday 25th April 2025. The gathering provided a platform for members of the global Lightsources.org network to exchange ideas, highlight successful strategies, and foster stronger collaboration.

The meeting served as a valuable forum for exploring key trends and challenges shaping science communication today. Topics discussed ranged from the impact of changing social media dynamics on outreach strategies, to cross-facility collaboration, promoting scientific capabilities to industry, and advancing Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in STEM.

The three-day programme featured a rich lineup of presentations and interactive sessions. Rachel Freeman, Industrial Liaison Marketing Manager at Diamond, outlined the facility’s industry-focused marketing approach. Amy Griffin, Engagement Team Manager, gave an overview of Diamond’s public engagement activities, highlighting strategies for connecting with diverse audiences and making complex science accessible. Attendees also had the opportunity to tour the Diamond facility, gaining insights into how visual storytelling and narrative tools are used to communicate advanced research in engaging ways.

Hannah Conduit, Social Media Manager at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), UK, led a hands-on workshop on emerging trends in social media, sharing practical advice based on STFC’s experiences. Delphine Chenevier, Head of Communications at the ESRF, provided updates on ESRF’s strategy and shared examples of successful collaborations through EIROforum. A round-table session on internal communications, led by Emma Corness, Internal Communications Manager at Diamond, sparked thoughtful discussion on engaging staff and enhancing internal messaging.

Participants also shared recent achievements and discussed their communications priorities for 2025-2026. Silvana Westbury, Project Manager for Lightsources.org, gave an overview of upcoming collaborative projects.

Lightsources.org creates one voice for the field, ensuring member facilities are well positioned for funding, access, and research, to make use of each facility’s unique capabilities, and to enhance the effectiveness of the science carried out.

If you are interested in becoming a member of Lightsources.org, please visit our About Lightsources.org page or contact Silvana Westbury, our Project Manager, at webmaster@lightsources.org  

To keep up to date with light source news, career opportunities, events, proposal deadlines and upgrade information from our member facilities, please subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter

Optimizing gold nanoparticles for better medical imaging, drug delivery, and cancer therapy

Optimizing gold nanoparticles for better medical imaging, drug delivery, and cancer therapy

Health care professionals use tiny particles of gold (nanoparticles) for a variety of medical applications — from diagnostic imaging to cancer treatment. Gold works well for these applications because it doesn’t cause adverse reactions inside the body, it doesn’t break down easily, and it’s easy to see on imaging tests.

Ontario researchers used the Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan to determine whether the size of gold nanoparticles affects how they interact with an amino acid called L-cysteine. L-cysteine plays a key role in many biological processes inside the human body. It can prevent gold nanoparticles from clumping together, which is important for ensuring medical treatments work properly. L-cysteine can form a strong bond with gold, which in turn enables it to more easily attach to specific targets, such as cancer cells.

Yolanda Hedberg, a professor of chemistry at Western University, says that while many different sizes of gold nanoparticles are used in medicine, little is known about how size affects their performance. “We’re trying to understand what they do in the body and where they go. It is important to know if the (gold) particle stays the same size, because each size has specific properties and you design the particle in this way, and then don’t want it to change in the human body.”

Using ultrabright synchrotron light — combined with other techniques — Hedberg and her team discovered that smaller gold nanoparticles (5 nanometer) bond more strongly with L-Cysteine than larger ones (10, 15, and 20 nm). For reference, a human hair is about 100,000 nm wide.

They also found that the smallest gold nanoparticles didn’t clump together as much when L-Cysteine was present. Clumping can negatively affect the effectiveness, stability, and safety of nanoparticles. “This shows they can maintain their size and properties in a biological environment,” says Hedberg.

Read more on CLS website

Battery research: visualisation of aging processes operando

Battery research: visualisation of aging processes operando

Lithium button cells with electrodes made of nickel-manganese-cobalt oxides (NMC) are very powerful. Unfortunately, their capacity decreases over time. Now, for the first time, a team has used a non-destructive method to observe how the elemental composition of the individual layers in a button cell changes during charging cycles. The study, now published in the journal Small, involved teams from the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), the University of Münster, researchers from the SyncLab research group at HZB and the BLiX laboratory at the Technical University of Berlin. Measurements were carried out in the BLiX laboratory and at the BESSY II synchrotron radiation source.

Lithium-ion batteries have become increasingly better. The combination of layered nickel-manganese-cobalt oxides (NMC) with a graphite electrode (anode) has been well established as the cathode material in button cells and has been continuously improved. However, even the best batteries do not last forever; they ‘age’ and lose capacity over time.

‘A lot happens at the interfaces between the anode, separator and cathode while a battery is charging or discharging,’ explains Ioanna Mantouvalou, physicist at HZB and first author of the study. Typically, these changes are only studied after the battery has been disassembled, i.e. ex situ and at a specific point in the cycling process. But there is now another way: in situ and operando experiments allow to look inside the battery while the processes are taking place, using X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) in a so-called confocal geometry. This geometry permits 3D scanning of a sample with depth resolutions down to 10 µm. Such experimental setups are already possible at the synchrotron radiation source BESSY II. However, the measurement time at BESSY II is limited, so batteries cannot be studied over their entire lifetime.

Read more on HZB website

Image: Here is a selection of 3D element distributions of individual elements after 10,000 charge cycles, i.e. post mortem: On the top left, crystallised electrolyte can be seen, iron in the metal contacts and copper from the back contact have remained stable, while manganese from the NMC cathode (upper light blue stripe) has partially deposited on the bottom of the anode. The publication contains the full explanation.

Credit: BLiX/TU Berlin/HZB

Building a Gated-Access Fast Lane for Ions

Building a Gated-Access Fast Lane for Ions

In organic conductors where charge is carried by both electrons and ions, scientists have discovered a way to make the ions move more than ten times faster than in comparable ion-tranport methods. The results could apply to a host of areas, including improved battery charging, biosensing, soft robotics, and neuromorphic computing.

Organic mixed ionic-electronic conductors (OMIECs) combine the advantages of the ion signaling used by many biological systems with the electron signaling used by computers. However, exactly how these conductors coordinate movement of both ions and electrons has not been well understood.

“Being able to control these signals that life uses all the time in a way that we’ve never been able to do is pretty powerful,” said Brian Collins, WSU physicist and senior author on the study. “This acceleration could also have benefits for energy storage, which could be a big impact.”

Collins and his colleagues observed that ions in OMIECs moved slowly relative to electrons. Because of their coordinated movement, the slow ion movement also slowed the electrical current. To solve this problem, the researchers created a straight, nanometer-sized channel just for the ions, which moved through the channel more than ten times faster than they would through water alone.

At the Advanced Light Source (ALS), resonant soft x-ray scattering (RSoXS) at Beamline 11.0.1.2 was used to explore the interplay between the superhighway effect and the internal nano-morphology of the channel.

Gated access to the channel was achieved by lining it with hydrophilic molecules, which attracted ions dissolved in water. Chemical reactions could turn this attraction off, opening and closing the channel, much the same way that biological systems control access through cell walls.

Read more on ALS website

Image: Record ion speeds are achieved in organic conductors where local molecules can attract or repel ions from nanochannels that act as ion superhighways. Credit: Second Bay Studios

Targeted funding of innovation for the energy transition

Targeted funding of innovation for the energy transition

LED lamps have seen rapid advances in recent years. PSI researcher Michael Weinold has been studying how this progress came about. One of the causes is spillover effects. These accelerate innovation and are important for the transformation of the energy system – and they can be deliberately promoted.

How do innovative ideas arise? If we knew the answer, we could produce a stream of new technologies. However for the most part, technological progress cannot be planned or else it follows a surprisingly circuitous path. Light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are a particularly good example of this.

Michael Weinold is now a PhD student at the Laboratory for Energy Systems Analysis at PSI and the laboratory of the same name at ETH Zurich, working with Professor Russell McKenna. For his master’s thesis at the University of Cambridge and ETH Zurich he studied the rapid development of LEDs. He found that spillover effects were an important factor. In research, this term is used to describe advances or technologies that were originally developed for entirely different industries or products. The effect is particularly striking in the case of LEDs, as Weinold demonstrates in his paper. “Above all, the crucial improvement in the quality of the light is largely due to spillover effects,” says Weinold.

Michael Weinold’s research was conducted during his time as a visiting researcher at the Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance (C-EENRG), in collaboration with Sergey Kolesnikov and Laura Diaz Anadon at the University of Cambridge. The work was part of a larger research project funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation at the University of Cambridge, Harvard University and the University of Minnesota. The project set out to understand how innovation occurs in the energy system and how this process can be specifically accelerated by investing in fundamental research so as to reduce the energy consumption and emissions of new technologies.

Chance and targeted promotion

For decades, LEDs led a niche existence as red indicator lights on electrical appliances. That was until 1992, when Shuji Nakamura and his team came up with the first blue LED, the basis for today’s white LEDs and hence LED lighting in general. The scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014 for their work. Since then, there have been rapid improvements in production costs, efficiency and, above all, light quality. The cool LED light of the early days has given way to a pleasantly warm light, whereby the colour of the light can now be freely adjusted.

An example of a spillover effect for LEDs is indium tin oxide (ITO), a material that conducts electricity but is also transparent to light. It has long been used in the aviation industry to heat cockpit windows and so prevent ice from forming. Conductive and transparent – that was exactly what the developers of LEDs needed, and so ITO quickly found its way into their products.

“The great thing about spillover is that it’s free,” says Weinold, because the technology has already been developed and can often be used straight away in other areas. A spillover is often helped by chance. LEDs generate white light from blue light, which is converted by a thin phosphor coating. However, in the early days of LEDs, the only available phosphors produced a cool white light. It was not until a chance conversation between two professors at a conference that the door was opened for a spillover in phosphors. Since then, LEDs have also been able to produce a pleasant warm white light.

The catch is that if spillovers are not to be left to chance, researchers need to know exactly what they are looking for. For example, as long as the fundamental physical effects taking place in a diode are not fully understood, it is not possible to look for specific solutions that will produce higher efficiencies.

According to Weinold, this leads to an insight which ought to be of great interest particularly to those funding research. In order to accelerate the development of new technologies through spillover effects, it is necessary to specifically promote fundamental research. Ideally in those areas where physical or chemical mechanisms are not yet fully understood. Weinold explains: “Once the fundamental principles of a new technology have been properly studied, spillover effects are almost inevitable.”

The future of LEDs

It will be interesting to see how LEDs continue to evolve – if they do at all. In his research, Weinold found that almost all the physical processes involved in generating light with LEDs have come close to their theoretical maximum efficiency in recent years. The development of conventional LEDs could therefore slow down considerably over the coming years.

Nobel Prize winner Shuji Nakamura seems to have anticipated this. He has abandoned the development of conventional LEDs and is now conducting research into laser LEDs, a field in which considerable gains in efficiency are still expected. And major manufacturers such as Osram and Philips are focusing on developing special applications such as micro-LEDs for VR headsets. On the other hand, certain processes in LEDs have already achieved efficiencies of over 100 percent thanks to quantum mechanical effects. So further surprises should not be ruled out.

Read more on PSI website

Image: Spillover effects have led to rapid advances in the technology used for white light LEDs. Specifically funding fundamental research could increase similar effects in other areas, thereby accelerating innovative solutions for transforming the energy system. Michael Weinold from PSI has investigated how such spillover effects can be promoted.

Credit: Paul Scherrer Institute PSI/Mahir Dzambegovic