BESSY II – From Pico to Femto – time resolved studies at BESSY II
180 scientists listened to the lectures. The aim of the dialogue is to identify future scientific fields as well as expectations, needs and requirements for BESSY II.
180 scientists attended the workshop on time resolved studies
From 26 to 27 January 2015, at the HZB workshop “From Pico to Femto”, more than 180 scientists discussed the advantages of conducting measurements on different time scales. With BESSY VSR, HZB is looking forward to perform a so-far unique upgrade to an electron storage ring: When complete, BESSY II will offer a flexible pulse duration of the useful light without diminishing the brilliancy of the light pulses.
Which specific areas of research could benefit from this was presented by speakers from university and non-university research establishments over two days in parallel sessions. Thematic blocks addressed in the lectures included magnetism, energy research, biosystems, and catalysis research.
Presently, BESSY II already allows measurement on different time scales, with methods such as low-alpha mode and femtoslicing available for user experiments. As it stands, however, this is limited because the short pulses come at the cost of light intensity.
“We were especially pleased to see so many researchers who have not yet experimented at BESSY II taking part in our workshop,” says organizer Dr. Antje Vollmer. About one third of the participants who followed the lectures in the full BESSY auditorium are potential new users of the facility.
The participants also expressed their own future needs for the machine and sampling environment. The results of the discussions were recorded and will be incorporated into the future plans for the BESSY VSR upgrade project.
The event was part of a series of foresight workshops HZB will be holding as a way to communicate closely with the user community about their research interests and needs. Already this year, more workshops will be held to address further questions regarding research at the photon source BESSY II.
You can read the abstracts of the lectures in the workshop booklet: booklet
- Battery research: visualisation of aging processes operandoLithium 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.
- New instrument at BESSY II: The OÆSE endstation in EMILA new instrument is now available at BESSY II for investigating catalyst materials, battery electrodes and other energy devices under operating conditions: the Operando Absorption and Emission Spectroscopy on EMIL (OÆSE) endstation in the Energy Materials In-situ Laboratory Berlin (EMIL). A team led by Raul Garcia-Diez and Marcus Bär showcases the instrument’s capabilities via a proof-of-concept study on electrodeposited copper.
- Green hydrogen: A cage structured material transforms into a performant catalystClathrates are characterised by a complex cage structure that provides space for guest ions too. Now, for the first time, a team has investigated the suitability of clathrates as catalysts for electrolytic hydrogen production with impressive results: the clathrate sample was even more efficient and robust than currently used nickel-based catalysts. They also found a reason for this enhanced performance. Measurements at BESSY II showed that the clathrates undergo structural changes during the catalytic reaction: the three-dimensional cage structure decays into ultra-thin nanosheets that allow maximum contact with active catalytic centres. The study has been published in the journal ‘Angewandte Chemie’.