Tag: upgrade

The driving force behind Cornell Compact Undulators at CHESS

The driving force behind Cornell Compact Undulators at CHESS

Researchers at CHESS are working to further improve the already impressive CHESS Compact Undulator, or CCU.

Within the new NSF-funded CHEXS award, Sasha Temnykh is developing a new driving mechanisms that will add variable gap control and even better tuning of the device, both desirable qualities for a variety of experimental needs.

Undulators are critical devices for the creation of brilliant X-rays at CHESS and other lightsources around the world. With the recent CHESS-U upgrade, the Cornell Electron Storage Ring, CESR, is now outfitted with seven new insertion devices. As the beam circulates around CESR, it passes through a series of alternating magnets in the undulators, resulting in X-rays that are roughly 20 times brighter than those produced prior to the upgrade, making CHESS an even more powerful X-ray source.

Researchers at CHESS lead by Sasha Temnykh are working continuously to improve the already impressive CHESS Compact Undulator, or CCU. The CCUs are about ten times more compact, lighter, and less expensive compared to conventional insertion devices typically used at other lightsource. They also require a significant shorter fabrication time. Nine CCUs have already been constructed in industry from the Cornell-held patent, and according to KYMA, the manufacturer of the CCU, other labs are starting to show interest in the device.

>Read more on the CHESS website

Image: Sasha Temnykh is the driving force behind the Cornell Compact Undulator design and development. 

Particle accelerators drive decades of discoveries at Berkeley Lab and beyond

Particle accelerators drive decades of discoveries at Berkeley Lab and beyond

Berkeley Lab’s expertise in accelerator technologies has spiraled out from Ernest Lawrence’s earliest cyclotron to advanced compact accelerators.

Accelerators have been at the heart of the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) since its inception in 1931, and are still a driving force in the Laboratory’s mission and its R&D program. Ernest O. Lawrence’s invention of the cyclotron, the first circular particle accelerator – and the development of progressively larger versions – led him to build on the hillside overlooking the UC Berkeley campus that is now Berkeley Lab’s home. A variety of large cyclotrons are in use today around the world, and new accelerator technologies continue to drive progress.
“Our work in accelerators and related technologies has shaped the growth and diversification of Berkeley Lab over its long history, and remains a vital core competency today,” said James Symons, associate laboratory director for Berkeley Lab’s Physical Sciences Area.

>Read more on the ALS at Berkeley Lab website

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Advanced Photon Source upgrade

Advanced Photon Source upgrade

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science (SC) has given DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory approval in the next phase of the $815M upgrade of the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a premier national research facility that equips scientists for discoveries that impact our technologies, economy, and national security.
DOE’s Critical Decision 3 (CD-3) milestone approval is a significant recognition of DOE’s acceptance of Argonne’s final design report for the complex APS Upgrade (APS-U), and authorizes the laboratory to proceed with procurements needed to build the nation’s brightest energy, storage-ring based X-ray source. The upgrade positions the APS to be a global leader among the new generation of storage-ring light sources that is now emerging.
Argonne’s APS, which works like a giant X-ray microscope, is a DOE Office of Science User Facility supported by the Scientific User Facilities Division of the Basic Energy Sciences Program in the Office of Science. It produces extremely bright, focused X-rays that peer through dense materials and illuminate the structure and chemistry of matter at the molecular and atomic level. By way of comparison, the X-rays produced at today’s APS are up to one billion times brighter than the X-rays produced in a typical dentist office.

Read more on the APS at Argonne National Laboratory website

Project Director Dave Robin announces ALS-U project beamlines

Project Director Dave Robin announces ALS-U project beamlines

Over the past year, a process involving ALS and ALS-U staff, the ALS user community, and external advisory committees has been ongoing to select the insertion-device beamlines that will be built and upgraded within the scope of the ALS-U Project. These beamlines will join existing ALS beamlines to form the full complement of capabilities that will be available at the upgraded ALS in several years. I am delighted to inform you that the selection process is now complete and to announce the result.

The ALS-U Project will build two new beamlines

  • a soft x-ray beamline in Sector 10, dubbed “FLEXON,” whose high-brightness coherent flux and multiple complementary techniques will probe the roles of multiscale heterogeneity in quantum materials; and
  • a tender x-ray beamline in Sector 8, whose coherent scattering and scanning spectromicroscopy capabilities will address challenges at the frontiers of diverse scientific areas, ranging from soft condensed matter and biomaterials to energy science and Earth and environmental sciences.

>Read more on the Advanced Light Source website

Image: ALS-U Project Director Dave Robin.

Conclusion of the construction project: CHESS-U.

Conclusion of the construction project: CHESS-U.

Fourteen months ago, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul came to the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS) to announce a $15 million grant from the New York State Upstate Revitalization Initiative.

The URI funding was for an upgrade project – dubbed “CHESS-U” – which would arm CHESS with enhanced X-ray capabilities, keeping it a leading synchrotron source in the U.S. The project was also expected to create dozens of jobs, both at Cornell and across the region.
On Jan. 17, Hochul returned to Wilson Laboratory, the home of CHESS, to proclaim the project complete in an event that drew local lawmakers, stakeholders from Cornell, and representatives from several local and regional manufacturers whose contributions were on display during a short tour of the new experiment hutches and other equipment.
There is still some work to be done related to the project, and the linear accelerator and synchrotron beams – which were turned off for CHESS-U on June 4, 2018 – aren’t scheduled to be turned back on until Jan. 23. The event marked the official end of the construction project, for which crews worked double shifts over the final six months of 2018 in order to minimize downtime. In addition, wall and ceiling segments for most of the new experiment hutches were built off-sight at Advanced Design Consulting of Lansing and shipped to CHESS for installation. Beamlines will gradually be recommissioned in the coming months.

>Read more on the CHESS website

Image: CHESS Director Joel Brock, left, takes Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul on a tour of the new construction at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source during an event Jan. 17 to mark the conclusion of the $15 million upgrade project, known as CHESS-U.
Credit: Jason Koski/Cornell Brand Communications

Tomography beamline at SESAME is officially launched

Tomography beamline at SESAME is officially launched

On 1st January 2019, the European Horizon 2020 project BEAmline for Tomography at SESAME (BEATS) was launched with the objective to design, procure, construct and commission a beamline for hard X-ray full-field tomography at the SESAME synchrotron in Jordan.

The European grant is worth 6 million euros and will span a four-year period from beginning 2019 to end 2022.
Led by the ESRF, the European synchrotron (France), BEATS involves leading research facilities in the Middle East (SESAME and the Cyprus Institute), and European synchrotron radiation facilities ALBA-CELLS (Spain), DESY (Germany), the ESRF (France), Elettra (Italy), INFN (Italy), PSI (Switzerland), SESAME (Jordan) and SOLARIS (Poland). The initiative is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

Nine partner institutes will join forces to lay the groundwork for the efficient and sustainable operation of the SESAME research infrastructure. Through the development and consolidation of the scientific case for a beamline for tomography, and actions to fortify the scientific community, the partners will pay particular attention to the R&D and technology needs of the SESAME Members. Built upon the OPEN SESAME project, BEATS will address the issue of sustainability of operation by preparing medium- to long-term funding scenarios for the tomography beamline and the facility.

>Read more on the European Synchrotron (ESRF) website

Beam us up

Beam us up

The upgrade of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory will make it between 100 and 1,000 times brighter than it is today.

That factor is such a big change, it’s going to revolutionize the types of science that we can do,” said Stephen Streiffer, Argonne Associate Laboratory Director for Photon Sciences and Director of the APS. “We’ll be able to look at the structure of materials and chemical systems in the interior of things — inside a turbine blade or a catalytic reactor — almost down to the atomic scale. We haven’t been able to do that before. Given that vast change, we can only dream about the science we’re going to do.”
In December, DOE approved the technical scope, cost estimate and plan of work for an upgrade of APS.
The APS upgrade has been in the works since 2010. The upgrade will reveal a new machine that will allow its 5,500 annual users from university, industrial, and government laboratories to work at a higher spatial resolution, or to work faster with a brighter beam (a beam with more X-rays focused on a smaller spot) than they can now.

>Read more on the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory website

Image: A closeup of the magnets that will drive the upgraded APS beams.

Two more experiment stations start user operation

Two more experiment stations start user operation

Facility double experiment capacity.

Two additional experiment stations—or instruments—have now started operation at European XFEL. The instruments for Small Quantum Systems (SQS) and Spectroscopy and Coherent Scattering (SCS) welcomed their first user groups for experiments last week and this week respectively. With the successful start of operation of the new instruments, European XFEL has now doubled its capacity to conduct research. With the first three groups coming to the new instruments in 2018, the total number of users who will have visited the facility in 2018 will reach over 500.
The two already operational instruments, SPB/SFX and FXE, have been used to examine biomolecules or biological processes and ultrafast reactions respectively since September 2017. In the future, two of the four now operational instruments will be run in parallel in twelve hour shifts. Two more instruments are scheduled to start user operation in the first half of 2019.

>Read more on the European XFEL website

Image: Scientists at the SQS instrument.
Credit: European XFEL / Jan Hosan

Ceremony marks the first stage of the Sirius project

Ceremony marks the first stage of the Sirius project

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.

>Read more on the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS) website

50 years later, Wilson Lab stays cutting edge

50 years later, Wilson Lab stays cutting edge

October 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the dedication of the Wilson Synchrotron Laboratory.

Initially built for $11million and promising to deliver cutting-edge research in elementary particle physics, it was the NSF’s largest project at that time. Fifty years later, the lab is going through its biggest upgrade in decades.
Chris Conolly looks at the concrete floor of Wilson Lab, eyeing up the numerous holes drilled by one of the contractors for the upgrade project. These one-inch holes pockmark the 10,000sf experimental hall of the Wilson Synchrotron Laboratory. In a way, these holes represent the numerous experiments conducted over the past 50 years.

There are a lot of holes. 652 to be exact, as the CHESS X-ray Technical Director and CHESS-U beamline project manager easily points out.
“It’s almost like being an archaeologist”, says Conolly, as he walks through the maze of newly constructed hutches in the experimental hall. He stops near the sector II hutches, “especially this spot here,” he says, presenting a repeating pattern of drilled holes arcing across the floor. The pattern spans a total of about 25 feet, and Chris, who has been with CHESS for the past 18 years, has no idea what was held down by the bolts marked in the floor.

>Read more on the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source website

Image: Robert Wilson, right, was the architect behind Wilson Lab, as well as many of the subsequent experiments. Wilson later went over to Fermilab to design their famed building. 

2018 ALS User Meeting Highlights

2018 ALS User Meeting Highlights

Past, present, and future converged at the ALS User Meeting, held October 2–4, 2018. About 480 registrants helped celebrate the 25th anniversary of first light at the ALS and the announcement of CD-1 approval for the ALS Upgrade project (ALS-U), a major federal milestone. Users’ Executive Committee (UEC) Chair Will Chueh kicked things off by acknowledging the organizers—UEC members Jennifer Ciezak-Jenkins, Alex Frañó, and Michael Jacobs—and thanking the ALS for its support. He also explained the organizing principle behind the program: to engage student and young-scientist users and strengthen interactions between users in general. Jeff Neaton, Berkeley Lab’s Associate Laboratory Director for Energy Sciences, then extended an official welcome to attendees. He noted that it’s been an exciting year for the ALS, which gained a new director, Steve Kevan, in addition to CD-1 approval for ALS-U.

>Read more on the Advanced Light Source website

Image: Plenary session, Day 1.
Credit: Peter DaSilva/Berkeley Lab

New NSLS-II beamline illuminates electronic structures

New NSLS-II beamline illuminates electronic structures

MIT scientists conduct the first experiment at NSLS-II’s Soft Inelastic X-ray Scattering beamline.

On July 15, 2018, the Soft Inelastic X-ray Scattering (SIX) beamline 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—welcomed its first visiting researchers. SIX is an experimental station designed to measure the electronic properties of solid materials using ultrabright x-rays. The materials can be as small as a few microns—one millionth of a meter.
The first researchers to take advantage of the world-class capabilities at SIX were Jonathan Pelliciari and Zhihai Zhu, two scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The pair used SIX to study a chromate sample, a fascinating material with novel applications in magnetism, batteries, and catalysis. Little was known about the electronic structure of the chromate sample the MIT team studied at SIX, and their research is aimed at unlocking the properties of this material. To do so, they needed the atomic sensitivity and energy resolution of the SIX beamline.

>Read more on the NSLS-II at Brookhaven National Laboratoy website

Picture: The sample chamber of the Soft Inelastic X-ray Scattering (SIX) beamline at NSLS-II allows scientists to mount their materials on a special holder that can be turned and moved into the beam of bright x-rays.

Advanced Light Source upgrade project moves forward

Advanced Light Source upgrade project moves forward

An upgrade of Berkeley Lab’s X-ray facility clears next stage in federal approval process.

The Advanced Light Source (ALS), a scientific user facility at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has received federal approval to proceed with preliminary design, planning and R&D work for a major upgrade project that will boost the brightness of its X-ray beams at least a hundredfold.

The upgrade will give the ALS, which this year celebrates its 25th anniversary, brighter beams with a more ordered structure – like evenly spaced ripples in a pond – that will better reveal nanoscale details in complex chemical reactions and in new materials, expanding the envelope for scientific exploration.
“This upgrade will make it possible for Berkeley Lab to be the leader in soft X-ray research for another 25 years, and for the ALS to remain at the center of this Laboratory for that time,” said Berkeley Lab Director Mike Witherell.

Steve Kevan, ALS Director, added, “The upgrade will transform the ALS. It will expand our scientific frontiers, enabling studies of materials and phenomena that are at the edge of our understanding today. And it will renew the ALS’s innovative spirit, attracting the best researchers from around the world to our facility to conduct their experiments in collaboration with our scientists.”

>Read more on the Advanced Light Source website

Image: A computer rendering providing a top view of the ALS and shows equipment that will be installed during the ALS-U project.
Credit: Berkeley Lab

Spectacular transport: Undulator moved to the electron storage ring BESSY II

Spectacular transport: Undulator moved to the electron storage ring BESSY II

A worldwide unique undulator developed at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) was installed in the storage ring BESSY II on September 20, 2018.

It supplies the “Energy Materials In-Situ Lab EMIL” with the hard X-ray light from BESSY II. The transport of the six-ton device was spectacular: several cranes were used to transport the undulator just a few hundred meters from the production building to the storage ring.

Undulators are key components to operate electron storage rings. The electrons pass through complex magnetic structures and are forced into an undulating orbit. This generates synchrotron radiation of great brilliance. What is special about the new undulator is that the magnetic structures are located in a vacuum chamber and cooled with liquid nitrogen. This permits significantly stronger magnetic fields to be generated to deflect the electrons.

>Read more on the BESSY II at HZB website

Image: Arrival in the experimental hall. The undulator was lifted into the storage ring with the overhead crane.
Credit: HZB/S. Zerbe

New hutches installed as CHESS-U takes shape

New hutches installed as CHESS-U takes shape

The construction portion of the CHESS-U upgrade is nearing completion as teams work to assemble the last of the experimental hutches. While there is still plenty of work to be done, the preparation for becoming a true 3rd-generation lightsource is paying off.

In early 2019, CHESS-U will have an increased energy of the electron beam, from 5.3 to 6.0 GeV, double the current from 100 to 200 mA, and reduction of the horizontal emittance of the x-ray beam from 100nm to 30nm.
While these high energy x-rays will soon benefit researchers from around the world, new hutches are currently being built to contain and control the beam from the new undulator sources being installed. These hutches, or light-tight experimental rooms, will contain the x-rays by using multiple layers of lead for the walls and ceilings with additional shielding at the seams.

The design and installation of these hutches has been carefully coordinated. As utilities, cables and HVAC systems start to enter each room, it is worth noting the clever design that was used in order to retain the radiation-tight rooms. While safety was definitely at the forefront of the engineers’ minds, the ability to streamline the installation process was deliberately considered, and has since proven useful to compensate for any unavoidable delays.

>Read more on the CHESS website

Image: Kurt McDonald, CHESS Operator, helps install a new hutch for Sector 2. The modular design of the hutches has allowed for quicker installation. 

 

New cryo-EM Collaboration

New cryo-EM Collaboration

UK set to be global leader in providing large-scale industrial access to Cryo-EM for drug discovery thanks to new collaboration.


 Thermo Fisher Scientific and Diamond Light Source are creating a step change for life sciences sector, a one-stop shop for structural biology and one of largest cryo-EM sites in the world.
An agreement to launch a new cryo-EM capability for use in the life sciences industry sector by Thermo Fisher Scientific, one of the world leaders in high-end scientific instrumentation, and Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron and one of the most advanced scientific facilities in the world, was announced today ahead of the official opening of the new national electron bio-imaging centre (eBIC) which will be held at Diamond on September 12th 2018.

This announcement confirms Diamond as one of the major global cryo-EM sites embedded with an abundance of complementary synchrotron-based techniques, and thereby, provides the life sciences sector with an offer not available anywhere else in the world.

Professor Dave Stuart, Life Sciences Director at Diamond and MRC Professor of Structural Biology at the University of Oxford, Department of Clinical Medicine, says, “Access to 21st century scientific tools to push the boundaries of scientific research is essential for both academia and industry, and what we have created here at Diamond is truly unique in the world in terms of size and scale. The new centre offers the opportunity for almost real-time physiology, capturing proteins in action at cryo-temperatures by flash-freezing them at various stages. What Diamond has created with eBIC is an integrated facility for structural biology, which will accelerate R&D for both industry and academic users. The additional advanced instruments made available by Thermo Fisher will position the UK as a global leader in providing large-scale industrial access to cryo-EM for drug discovery research. Our new collaboration provides a step change in our offer for industry users and helps ensure that R&D remains in the UK.”

>Read more on the Diamond Light Source website

Image: Close up sample loading Krios I.