NEAT starts user operation
Gerrit Günther und Veronka Grzymek help Zhilun Lu with the experiment. © HZB
The newly built time of flight spectrometre NEAT has welcomed its first users: Jie Ma from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and his colleague Zhilun Lu examined magnetic excitations in crystalline samples and enjoyed fast data rate and high flexibility of instrumental configurations. NEAT team is now looking forward to further new studies and user experiments!
The scientists from Shanghai did find what they were looking for, after only 60 minutes of data collection: “Our experiment was very successful and we hope to publish the results soon”, Zhilun Lu said.
Neutron time-of-flight spectrometer NEAT has a long history of successful application to study dynamics and function on very broad time and space domains ranging from 10-14 – 10-10 seconds and from 0.05 to up to about 5 nanometers respectively. Started originally in 1995 as NEAT I, NEAT II has been fully rebuild in order to address the needs of the user community for more powerful instruments. The upgrade started in 2010 after a rigorous internal and external selection process and resulted in 70 fold higher flux and a number of new instrumental capabilities including an improved angular resolution, larger accessible wavelength range and a design suited for high magnetic field experiments up to 15 Tesla.
- Spin waves inside a nano-oscillator imaged for the first timeFor the first time, researchers have directly imaged the magnetisation dynamics inside a spin Hall nano-oscillator — a nanoscale device that converts direct current into tunable microwave signals and is a promising building block for energy-efficient wireless communication and brain-inspired computing. A Swedish–German team led by the University of Gothenburg and Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) achieved this using time-resolved scanning transmission X-ray microscopy at the MAXYMUS instrument at BESSY II. The results, now published in Advanced Materials, reveal spin-wave features that had escaped previous, indirect measurement techniques.
- New method shows how molecular switches are influenced by their neighborsResearchers at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Helmholtz Centre Berlin (HZB) have, for the first time, been able to directly observe how the environment surrounding a molecular switch influences its electronic structure. Molecular switches are molecules that can be switched between two states by external influences such as changes in temperature—similar to a switch with the positions »On« and »Off«. Such molecules are being investigated as potential building blocks for future data storage devices or sensor materials. Using magnetic-field-dependent terahertz spectroscopy, the researchers have now, for the first time, been able to distinguish whether neighbouring molecules in a material are in the same or different states. The results have been published in the journal »Angewandte Chemie International Edition«.
- BESSY II is back in operation after maintenance shutdownOn 7 September 2026, BESSY II was set into operation after a four-week shutdown. BESSY II is scheduled to resume full user operation on 22 September.