Dancing BESSY-VSR
Paul Goslawski from Godehard Wüstefeld's team was the initiator of this project: Why not demonstrate in vivid form, what the future project BESSY-VSR is all about? With novel cavities to be introduced in synchrotron storage ring BESSY II, the new BESSY-VSR is supposed to compress some of the stored electron buckets. So it is possible to produce brilliant light pulses with variable length: short and long pulses in one ring. The user is able to choose what kind of pulse he needs for his experiment. But the team still has to solve some tricky problems.
Two short movies are now produced to show how BESSY-VSR works and what remains to be solved: The principle as well as the difficulties are now being performed with a dance!
To realize his project, Paul quickly found enthusiastic volunteers: 24 colleagues took part, among them two heads of institutes. Most of them danced in a circle (the storage ring) as "electron buckets", while the "cavities" provided some drive to the system. With the help of a few more colleagues, the shooting of the videos itself only took one afternoon, whereas Paul spent some weekends editing the final film.
But it was worth the effort! Now, the two short films are available in the HZB media centre and on youtube, both in german and english language. "They could even be of good use in presentations", Paul says. Because only motion pictures can illustrate complex physics in an easy way.
- Electrocatalysis with dual functionality – an overviewHybrid electrocatalysts can produce green hydrogen, for example, and valuable organic compounds simultaneously. This promises economically viable applications. However, the complex catalytic reactions involved in producing organic compounds are not yet fully understood. Modern X-ray methods at synchrotron sources such as BESSY II, enable catalyst materials and the reactions occurring on their surfaces to be analysed in real time, in situ and under real operating conditions. This provides insights that can be used for targeted optimisation. A team has now published an overview of the current state of knowledge in Nature Reviews Chemistry.
- BESSY II: Phosphorus chains – a 1D material with 1D electronic propertiesFor the first time, a team at BESSY II has succeeded in demonstrating the one-dimensional electronic properties in phosphorus. The samples consisted of short chains of phosphorus atoms that self-organise at specific angles on a silver substrate. Through sophisticated analysis, the team was able to disentangle the contributions of these differently aligned chains. This revealed that the electronic properties of each chain are indeed one-dimensional. Calculations predict an exciting phase transition to be expected as soon as these chains are more closely packed. While material consisting of individual chains with longer distances is semiconducting, a very dense chain structure would be metallic.
- What vibrating molecules might reveal about cell biologyInfrared vibrational spectroscopy at BESSY II can be used to create high-resolution maps of molecules inside live cells and cell organelles in native aqueous environment, according to a new study by a team from HZB and Humboldt University in Berlin. Nano-IR spectroscopy with s-SNOM at the IRIS beamline is now suitable for examining tiny biological samples in liquid medium in the nanometre range and generating infrared images of molecular vibrations with nanometre resolution. It is even possible to obtain 3D information. To test the method, the team grew fibroblasts on a highly transparent SiC membrane and examined them in vivo. This method will provide new insights into cell biology.