international collaboration – Page 4

Funding research crucial to Africa: Energy and healthcare

2019/03/272019/04/08

The 27th March 2019 saw the official launch of START (Synchrotron Techniques for African Research and Technology), a £3.7M grant awarded to a consortium of researchers led by Diamond Light Source by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to work with African scientists on START.

Africa does not yet have a synchrotron light source, but African researchers are keen to apply synchrotron techniques to their research problems. The START project will fund research posts in Africa and the UK with a focus on two key areas crucial to development in Africa – energy and healthcare . The scientific results that come out of the project will be valuable in themselves, and may also lead to commercial applications, but START will also promote the development of research capabilities within Africa, and international research collaborations.

For Diamond Principal Investigator, Prof. Chris Nicklin, this will be the most important result: It is an exciting prospect to work together on these challenging problems and this funding will enable us to form very strong links at all levels, in particular helping to train the next generation of researchers in nations that have not had the chance to access and exploit synchrotron based techniques in their research. The work will focus around the development needs of African countries, driven by the Africa-based investigators and the non-government organisations (NGOs) that we have on board.

Low background noise crucial for single particle imaging experiments

2019/03/192019/03/26

Model experiment brings scientists a step closer to SPI at European XFEL

Taking snapshots of single molecules with X-rays has long been a dream for many scientists. Such experiments have successfully been computationally modelled, but have never been practically demonstrated before.
In a model experiment carried out at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), European XFEL scientists, together with international collaborators, have now come one step closer to successfully carrying out so-called single particle imaging experiments (SPI) at X-ray laser facilities such as European XFEL. In a paper published today in the journal from the International Union of Crystallography (IUCrJ), scientists demonstrate experimentally that, in principle, a 3D structure can indeed be obtained from many tens of thousands of very weak images, using X-rays with similar properties as produced at X-ray free-electron lasers such as European XFEL.

>Read more on the European XFEL website

Image: Reconstruction of the 3D electron density. (a) Reconstruction from the result derived by EMC. The electron density projected along an axis perpendicular to the drawing plane is shown here. (b) Reconstruction from the reference Fourier volume. Again, the projected electron density is shown. (c) 3D iso-surface rendering of the reconstructed electron density shown in panel (a). The threshold of the iso-surface has been set to 0.2, given a normalized density with values between 0 and 1. (d) Scanning electron micrograph from the original sample.
Image source

Scientists develop printable water sensor

2019/03/042019/03/04

X-ray investigation reveals functioning of highly versatile copper-based compound

A new, versatile plastic-composite sensor can detect tiny amounts of water. The 3d printable material, developed by a Spanish-Israeli team of scientists, is cheap, flexible and non-toxic and changes its colour from purple to blue in wet conditions. The researchers lead by Pilar Amo-Ochoa from the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) used DESY’s X-ray light source PETRA III to understand the structural changes within the material that are triggered by water and lead to the observed colour change. The development opens the door to the generation of a family of new 3D printable functional materials, as the scientists write in the journal Advanced Functional Materials (early online view).

Image: When dried, for example in a water-free solvent, the sensor material turns purple.
Credit: UAM, Verónica García Vegas

Watching molecules in a light-triggered catalyst ring ‘like an ensemble of bells’

2019/02/212019/03/13

A better understanding of these systems will aid in developing next-generation energy technologies.

Photocatalysts – materials that trigger chemical reactions when hit by light – are important in a number of natural and industrial processes, from producing hydrogen for fuel to enabling photosynthesis.
Now an international team has used an X-ray laser at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to get an incredibly detailed look at what happens to the structure of a model photocatalyst when it absorbs light.
The researchers used extremely fast laser pulses to watch the structure change and see the molecules vibrating, ringing “like an ensemble of bells,” says lead author Kristoffer Haldrup, a senior scientist at Technical University of Denmark (DTU). This study paves the way for deeper investigation into these processes, which could help in the design of better catalysts for splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen for next-generation energy technologies.
“If we can understand such processes, then we can apply that understanding to developing molecular systems that do tricks like that with very high efficiency,” Haldrup says.

Image: When photocatalyst molecules absorb light, they start vibrating in a coordinated way, like an ensemble of bells. Capturing this response is a critical step towards understanding how to design molecules for the efficient transformation of light energy to high-value chemicals.
Credit: Gregory Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Water is more homogeneous than expected

2019/02/202019/02/21

In order to explain the known anomalies in water, some researchers assume that water consists of a mixture of two phases even under ambient conditions.

However, new X-ray spectroscopic analyses at BESSY II, ESRF and Swiss Light Source show that this is not the case. At room temperature and normal pressure, the water molecules form a fluctuating network with an average of 1.74 ± 2.1% donor and acceptor hydrogen bridge bonds per molecule each, allowing tetrahedral coordination between close neighbours.
Water at ambient conditions is the matrix of life and chemistry and behaves anomalously in many of its properties. Since Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, two distinct separate phases have been argued to coexist in liquid water, competing with the other view of a single-phase liquid in a fluctuating hydrogen bonding network – the continuous distribution model. Over time, X-ray spectroscopic methods have repeatedly been interpreted in support of Röntgen’s postulate.

Image: Water molecules are excited with X-ray light (blue). From the emitted light (purple) information on H-bonds can be obtained.
Credit: T. Splettstoesser/HZB

Superferromagnetism with electric-field induced strain

2019/02/152019/03/19

Data storage in today’s magnetic media is very energy consuming. Combination of novel materials and the coupling between their properties could reduce the energy needed to control magnetic memories thus contributing to a smaller carbon footprint of the IT sector. Now an international team led by HZB has observed at the HZB lightsource BESSY II a new phenomenon in iron nanograins: whereas normally the magnetic moments of the iron grains are disordered with respect each other at room temperature, this can be changed by applying an electric field: This field induces locally a strain on the system leading to the formation of a so-called superferromagnetic ordered state.
Switching magnetic domains in magnetic memories requires normally magnetic fields which are generated by electrical currents, hence requiring large amounts of electrical power. Now, teams from France, Spain and Germany have demonstrated the feasibility of another approach at the nanoscale: “We can induce magnetic order on a small region of our sample by employing a small electric field instead of using magnetic fields”, Dr. Sergio Valencia, HZB, points out.

Image: The cones represents the magnetization of the nanoparticles. In the absence of electric field (strain-free state) the size and separation between particles leads to a random orientation of their magnetization, known as superparamagnetism
Credit: HZB

The ALBA synchrotron and Portugal boost their scientific collaboration

2019/02/112019/02/14

Science ministers from Portugal and Spain have visited ALBA, motivated by a collaboration agreement that promotes the Portuguese scientific community using the ALBA Synchrotron and also includes a training program for Portuguese postdoctoral researchers at ALBA.

On 11th February 2019, at the ALBA Synchrotron facility, an agreement has been signed to promote scientific collaboration between Spain and Portugal. The agreement has been signed by Caterina Biscari, director of ALBA, and Paulo Ferrão, president of the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), under the auspices of Pedro Duque, minister of Science, Innovation and Universities of the Spanish Government, Manuel Heitor, minister of Science Technology and Higher Education of Portugal, and Àngels Chacón, regional minister of Business and Knowledge of the Catalan Government and current chair of the ALBA Rector Council.

The Portuguese scientific community has been using the ALBA Synchrotron since the beginning of its operation in 2012. Nowadays, Portugal is the 5th country that performs more experiments at ALBA, after Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom. They have obtained 60% of requested beamtime and have carried out experiments mainly in biology, protein crystallography and materials science.

>Read more on the ALBA website

Image: Images of the signing agreement ceremony, held at the ALBA Synchrotron. From left to right, Caterina Biscari, director of the ALBA Synchrotron, Àngels Chacón, regional minister of Business and Knowledge of the Catalan government, Pedro Duque, minister of Science, Innovation and Universities of the Spanish Government, Manuel Heitor, minister of Science Technology and Higher Education of Portugal, and Paulo Ferrão, president of the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT). In the last picture, members of the ALBA Synchrotron management, Joan Gómez Pallarés, General director of Research from the Catalan government, and Ramon Pascual, honorary president of ALBA.

Synchrotron light unveils new insights about amytrophic lateral sclerosis

2019/01/282019/01/31

Synergetic combination of different imaging and spectroscopic synchrotron techniques performed in ALBA and APS (USA) has discovered new aspects about astrocytes cells of this neurodegenerative disease.

Results, published in Analytical Chemistry, show significant differences between ALS and control astrocytes, including structural, chemical and macromolecular anomalies. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal progressive neurodegenerative disease that causes the degeneration and death of neurons that control voluntary muscles. Still today the causes of this disease are unknown in 90% of the cases. However, some of them are caused by the mutation of sod1 gene. This gene encodes an enzyme (SOD1) that is involved in cellular protection against oxidative stress. Mutations dramatically alter the biochemical properties of SOD1, in particular its metal binding affinity and its anti-oxidative activity levels. But it is still unknown how these mutations block the normal cell function and lead to death of motor neurons. The ALBA Synchrotron, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Belgrade Pavle Andjus and Stefan Stamenković (who accomplished his PhD thesis using these results) and Vladan Lučić from Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (Germany), has studied with synchrotron light techniques and classical biochemical laboratory approaches the cellular structural and biochemical changes of this gene mutation in a transgenic animal model of ALS. In particular, scientists have analysed astrocytes, one kind of brain cells that are key players in pathological processes of this disease.

>Read more on the ALBA website

Image: Researcher Tanja Dučić during the experiment performed at ALBA, at the MIRAS beamline.

A timely solution for the photosynthetic oxygen evolving clock

2019/01/252019/01/31

XFEL Hub collaboration reveals the intermediates of the photosynthetic water oxidation clock

A large international collaborative effort aided by the XFEL Hub at Diamond Light Source has generated the most detailed time-resolved studies to date of a key protein involved in photosynthesis. The pioneering work, recently published in Nature, shows how photosystem II harnesses light energy to produce oxygen – insights that could direct a next generation of photovoltaic cells.
>Read more on the Diamond Light Source website

Image: this figure is issued from a video you can watch here.

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).

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

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

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.

SESAME becomes the first associate of LEAPS

2018/11/142018/11/19

At its first Plenary Meeting that is being held at DESY on 12-14 November, the Members of LEAPS (League of European Accelerator-Based Photon Sources) unanimously decided to grant SESAME Associate status.

SESAME thus becomes the first Associate of LEAPS.

On signing the Declaration of Association to the LEAPS Consortium with Helmut Dosch, Chair of LEAPS and Chair of the DESY Board of Directors, Rolf Heuer, President of the SESAME Council, said that “it is a great honour for SESAME to be the first Associate of LEAPS; the scientific and technical development of SESAME and visibility of the Centre will greatly benefit from this association”.

>Read more on the SESAME website

Image: Schematic overview from SESAME, find more here.

Ferroelectric control of the spin texture in GeTe

2018/11/142018/12/20

Spin-orbit coupling effects in materials with broken inversion symmetry are responsible for peculiar spin textures, giving rise to intriguing phenomena such as intrinsic spin Hall effect. Among these materials, ferroelectrics allow for non-volatile control of the spin degree of freedom through the electrical inversion of the spin texture, based on their reversible spontaneous polarization. Finding suitable ferroelectric semiconductors would be a fundamental achievement towards the implementation of novel electronic and spintronic devices combining memory and computing functionalities.
Germanium Telluride emerges as promising candidate, since theoretically proposed as the father compound of the new class of ferroelectric Rashba semiconductors. Its ferroelectricity provides a non-volatile state variable able to generate and drive a giant bulk Rashba–type spin splitting of the electronic bands. Its semiconductivity and silicon-compatibility allows for the realization of spin-based non-volatile transistors.
A European team of both experimentalists and theoreticians from Italy (Politecnico di Milano, IFN-CNR, CNR-SPIN, CNR-IOM) and Germany (Paul-Drude-Institut für Festkörperelektronik, Universität Würzburg) has demonstrated the ferroelectric control of the Rashba spin texture in GeTe probed by spin and angular resolved photoemission spectroscopy at the Advanced Photoelectric Effect experiments (APE) beamline and supported by NFFA.

Image: (a, a’) PFM ferroelectric hysteresis loops and the pristine polarization states for the as-prepared Te- and Ge-terminated GeTe(111) surfaces, respectively. (b, b’) DFT calculations of the k-resolved spin polarization along two high symmetry crystallographic directions. The main bulk Rashba bands are marked as B₁ and B₂. The black dashed line indicates the wave vector k of SARPES measurements. (c, c’) Spin-polarized currents and spin asymmetries (P_x) versus binding energy at the wave vector k. The peaks correspond to the intersection of the Rashba bands B₁ and B₂ with the vertical dashed line at k. (d, d’) Constant energy maps for the Te- and Ge-terminated surfaces. Blue and red arrows indicate the sense of circulation of spins, opposite for the two opposite ferroelectric polarizations.

Acid-base equilibria: not exactly like you remember in chemistry class

2018/10/18

Work published in the Royal Society of Chemistry with the support of the Helmholtz Association through the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science at DESY, MAX IV Laboratory, Lund University, Sweden, European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 and the Academy of Finland.

Remember doing titrations in chemistry class? Adding acid drop-by-drop to the beaker and the moment you took your eye off it the solution completely changed colour.
We learned in chemistry that by doing this titration, we were actually affecting an important equilibrium in the beaker between acids and bases. This equilibrium was first described at the turn of the 20th century by American biochemist Lawrence Henderson and modified by Karl Hasselbalch giving us the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation. The discovery and subsequent study of acids and bases using this equation has led to the discovery of many important phenomena in the natural world from as how cells function to how materials are formed.

However, after years of study, an idea arose that questioned the validity of the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation, what happens at the surface? If you have a beaker filled with a dilute acid, what happens at the very top atomic layer? The top layer of a liquid in a beaker is special for many reasons, but if you’re a dissolved molecule, it means that you’re no longer surrounded by water on all sides. For hydrophobic molecules, this means that it is favourable to be at the surface. With this in mind, the scientists took another look at the Henderson-Hasselbalch equilibrium equation and thought that it couldn’t work at the surface. Many studies have measured indicator chemical species, and determined that the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation does not seem to apply at the surface, and concluded that the concentration of hydronium or hydroxide ions, which determines the acidity/basicity, is different at the air-liquid interface than in the bulk.