BESSY II is ready for user service
A view of what had been the practically empty segment at EMIL in the experimental hall; the beam tubes for EMIL are already being marked out on the brand-new flooring. Photo: Ingo Müller/HZB
BESSY II was shut down as scheduled from February 9th until the end of March for refurbishment and modernization. The accelerator is operational once again, and has been running since the beginning of April, beginning with beam scrubbing to increase the lifetime of the electrons in the storage ring and to improve operation. At the same time teams have been working on the calibration and commissioning of their instruments. BESSY II will be ready for user service once again on April 21 2015.
The new flooring shines - it desperately needed to be re-done in heavily worn areas. But that is just the most obvious update undertaken during this shutdown. At least five major projects were coordinated since the beginning of February. „Our best thanks to the staff, who worked overtime to get everything ready“, says Prof. Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla, scientific director of HZB, „now User Service can start again as planned.“
As a result BESSY II is now equipped with a state-of-art Personal Safety Interlock to ensure safe operation. “The interlock shuts off the machine immediately or brings it to a safe state if someone makes an error while in operation or opens a door to a restricted area”, explains Müller. The new interlock system is based on modern safety PLCs. These programmable logic controllers are certified and the operation of the entire system was inspected and accepted by the radiation safety officer.
Vacuum Sement rebuilt for EMIL
The EMIL laboratory has been added, therefore a vacuum segment in the storage ring needed to be completely re-built. "During this shutdown we also prepared the vacuum system needed for both undulators that have been designed by the Undulator-team specifically for EMIL", Christian Jung (Scientific-Technical Infrastructure II) explains. This is because energies of up to 10,000 eV will be needed for EMIL instead of just the normal 60 to 2000 eV for nominal BESSY II operations.
Modern RF amplifyers and a multipole wavelength shifter have been installed
The replacement of two out of the four klystron-based RF amplifiers, used to power the RF cavities was also very elaborate. They were replaced by newly designed Solid State RF amplifiers. The multipole wavelength shifter on the EDDI beamline, which was damaged last year, has now also been repaired and re-installed.
Dipole front-end systems will get new absorbers
“In addition, we installed new beam line absorbers on a quarter of the dipole front-end systems during this shutdown. That was necessary because we have a 300 mA beam current present at all times in the ring due to operating in top-up mode", Jung explains.
User service resumes April 21, but the next shutdown is already being planned. The work that began during the 2013 shutdown should be completed by the end of 2015. Still on the agenda: replacement of the last two “old” RF cavities in the machine with new RF cavities, installation of the two new undulators for EMIL, changeover of the remaining klystron-based RF amplifiers to Solid State technology as well as fitting new absorbers in the remaining dipole front-end systems.
- BESSY II: How intrinsic oxygen shortens the lifespan of solid-state batteriesAlthough solid-state batteries (SSBs) demonstrate high performance and are intrinsically safe, their capacity currently declines rapidly. A team from the TU Wien, Humboldt-University Berlin and HZB has now analysed a TiS₂|Li₃YCl₆ solid-state half-cell in operando at BESSY II using a special sample environment that allows for non-destructive investigation under real operating conditions. Data obtained by combination of soft and hard X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS and HAXPES) revealed a new degradation mechanism that had not previously been identified in solid-state batteries. They have gained some surprising insights, particularly regarding the harmful role played by intrinsic oxygen. This study provides valuable information for improving design and handling of such batteries.
- Spintronics at BESSY II: Real-time analysis of magnetic bilayer systemsSpintronic devices enable data processing with significantly lower energy consumption. They are based on the interaction between ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic layers. Now, a team from Freie Universität Berlin, HZB and Uppsala University has succeeded in tracking, for each layer separately, how the magnetic order changes after a short laser pulse has excited the system. They were also able to identify the main cause of the loss of antiferromagnetic order in the oxide layer: the excitation is transported from the hot electrons in the ferromagnetic metal to the spins in the antiferromagnet.
- Environmental Chemistry at BESSY II: Radicals in waterwaysHow do radicals form in aqueous solutions when exposed to UV light? This question is important for health research and environmental protection, for example with regard to the overfertilisation of water bodies by intensive agriculture. A team at BESSY II has now developed a new method of investigating hydroxyl radicals in solution. By using a clever trick, the scientists gained surprising insights into the reaction pathway.