detector – Lightsources.org

Spintronics: A new tool at BESSY II for chirality investigations

2022/10/242022/11/09

Information on complex magnetic structures is crucial to understand and develop spintronic materials. Now, a new instrument named ALICE II is available at BESSY II. It allows magnetic X-ray scattering in reciprocal space using a new large area detector. A team at HZB and Technical University Munich has demonstrated the performance of ALICE II by analysing helical and conical magnetic states of an archetypal single crystal skyrmion host. ALICE II is now available for guest users at BESSY II.

The new instrument was conceived and constructed by HZB physicist Dr. Florin Radu and the technical design department at HZB in close cooperation with Prof. Christian Back from the Technical University Munich and his technical support. It is now available for guest users at BESSY II as well.

“ALICE II has an unique capability, namely to allow for magnetic X-ray scattering in reciprocal space using a new large area detector, and this at up to the highest allowed reflected angles”, Radu explains. To demonstrate the performance of the new instrument, the scientists examined a polished sample of Cu₂OSeO₃.

Read more on the HZB website

Image: The picture reflects the main effect measured with a newly developed instrument ALICE II at BESSY II: A circular polarised soft-X-ray beam scatters off a crystal that exhibits a helical or conical magnetic order. This leads to two scattered beams of different intensity. The difference in intensity of these scattered beams is a measure of the chirality of the equidistant magnetic helices.

Credit: © F. Radu/HZB

A new X-ray detector snaps 1,000 atomic-level pictures per second of nature’s ultrafast processes

2020/08/202020/08/24

The ePix10k detector is ready to advance science at SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source X-ray laser and at facilities around the world.

Scientists around the world use synchrotrons and X-ray lasers to study some of nature’s fastest processes. These machines generate very bright and short X-ray flashes that, like giant strobe lights, “freeze” rapid motions and allow researchers to take sharp snapshots and make movies of atoms buzzing around in a sample.

A new generation of X-ray detectors developed at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, called ePix10k, can take up to 1,000 of these snapshots per second – almost 10 times more than previous generations – to make more efficient use of light sources that fire thousands of X-ray flashes per second. Compared to previous ePix and other detectors, this X-ray “camera” can also handle more X-ray intensity, is three times more sensitive and is available with higher resolution – up to 2 megapixels.

Argonne scientists fashion new class of X-ray detector

2020/04/232020/05/06

The original Argonne press release by Jared Sagoff can be read here.

Getting an X-ray at the dentist or the doctor is at best a little inconvenient and at worst a little risky, as radiation exposure has been linked to an increased risk of cancer. But researchers may have discovered a new way to generate precise X-ray images with a lower amount of exposure, thanks to an exciting set of materials that is generating a lot of interest.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory have identified a new class of X-ray detectors based on layered perovskites, a semiconducting material also used in some other types of applications such as solar cells and light-emitting diodes. The detector with the new material is 100 times more sensitive than conventional, silicon-based X-ray detectors.

>Read more on the Advanced Photon Source website.

Image: Two-dimensional (2D) Ruddlesden-Popper phase layered perovskites (BA)2(MA)2Pb3I10 with three layers of inorganic octahedral slab and bulky organics as spacers.

Credit: Image by Dave Tsai/Los Alamos.

New detector accelerates protein crystallography

2020/02/172020/02/20

In Feburary a new detector was installed at one of the three MX beamlines at HZB.

Compared to the old detector the new one is better, faster and more sensitive. It allows to acquire complete data sets of complex proteins within a very short time.

Proteins consist of thousands of building blocks that can form complex architectures with folded or entangled regions. However, their shape plays a decisive role in the function of the protein in the organism. Using macromolecular crystallography at BESSY II, it is possible to decipher the architecture of protein molecules. For this purpose, tiny protein crystals are irradiated with X-ray light from the synchrotron source BESSY II. From the obtained diffraction patterns, the morphology of the molecules can be calculated.

>Read more on the BESSY II at HZB website

Image: 60s on the new detector were sufficient to obtain the electron density of the PETase enzyme.
Credit: HZB

Intermittent plasticity in individual grains

2019/01/182019/01/30

A study using high energy x-ray diffraction.

Understanding the behavior of metals undergoing deformation is critical to design for fuel efficiency, performance and safety/crashworthiness. Traditional engineering analysis treats metal deformation as a smooth motion, like a fluid, when in reality the flow is intermittent at finer length scales. Use of a new detector enabled the study of these intermittent bursts of deformation at the scale of individual crystals in a loaded test sample.
A metal component is polycrystalline, composed of many crystals or grains. At the scale of millimeters, the deformation of a metal appears to proceed smoothly, whereas at the microscopic scale the underlying processes occurring in individual grains proceed in fits and starts. In this collaboration between researchers at Cornell University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Advanced Photon Source of Argonne National Laboratory, a high-speed detector was used to study these microscale deformation bursts in a grain-by-grain manner.

>Read more on the CHESS website

Image: The MM-PAD is shown with the vacuum cover and x-ray window removed. The 2×3 arrangement of detector modules are the brownish squares in the center. Each module consists of 128×128 square pixels, where each pixel is 150µm of a side. Each module is roughly 2 cm x 2 cm in size. There is a 5 pixel wide (0.75 mm) inactive area between adjacent modules. (This photo is of an MM-PAD with Si, instead of CdTe sensors; otherwise, the two types of MM-PADs look identical.)

Big science -literally- at ESRF

2018/06/012018/06/07

This is no ordinary experiment. With a huge detector in tow and a team of 15 scientists from Goethe University in Frankfurt (Germany), it is probably as big as science gets -literally.

A 4-metre-long lorry arrived at the ESRF with a precious load: a so-called COLTRIMS Reaction Microscope. The chamber is so big that it requires a crane to fit it into the experimental hutch of ID31. And lots of manpower to set the experiment up. The aim: to image the momentum distribution of one of the two electrons in the Helium atom without averaging over the momentum distribution of the other, offering the most complete and detailed view on electron correlation.

The COLTRIMS technique allows the team to measure event by event the initial state momentum of a Compton scattered electron of a Helium atom and, in coincidence with this, they measure the second electron’s momentum as it is shaken off.

Image: The team was in high spirits throughout the two-week duration of the experiment.
Credits: M. Kircher.

X-ray detector for studying characteristics of materials

2018/01/182018/03/12

Sol M. Gruner’s group, Physics, has been a leader in the development of x-ray detectors for scientific synchrotron applications, and the team’s technology is used around the world. Their detectors utilize pixelated integrated circuit silicon layers to absorb x-rays to produce electrical signals. The wide dynamic range, high sensitivity, and rapid image frame rate of the detectors enable many time-resolved x-ray experiments that have been difficult to perform until now.

The detectors are limited by the silicon layer. Low atomic number materials such as silicon become increasingly transparent to x-rays as the energy of the x-rays rises. Gruner’s group is now developing a variant of their detector that will use semiconductors comprised of high atomic weight elements to absorb the x-rays and produce the resultant electrical signals. The Detector Group, led by Antonio Miceli, at the United States Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) will simultaneously develop the ancillary electronics and interfacing required to produce fully functional prototypes suitable for high x-ray energy experiments at the APS and CHESS.

>Read more on the CHESS website

Image: Sol M. Gruner, Physics, College of Arts and Sciences
Credit: Jesse Winter