International research at BESSY II continued even in the corona year 2021
In 2021, our users at BESSY II came from 34 countries. © HZB
2021 was not an easy year for international research: owing to lockdowns and travel bans, science was hit hard by the pandemic situation. Nevertheless, experiments continued at a high level at the BESSY II light source in Berlin Adlershof – thanks in part to new remote service offers. Here are the figures at a glance.
“It makes us happy that BESSY II was dependably available to researchers for around 6000 hours despite the difficult conditions,” says Dr. Antje Vollmer, Head of User Coordination at HZB. The light generated at BESSY II is directed through 25 beamlines to 37 experimental stations. Thus, altogether, light was available for nearly 150,000 hours of research at all the beamlines. This light is used for experiments in many fields, including physics, chemistry and the life sciences.
47 percent of user groups from abroad
As was to be expected, given that travel had to be limited, COVID-19 left a dip in user visits in 2021. “We counted just under 1400 visits from users last year. What surprised us, in view of the tense situation, was that 30 percent of the user groups came from other European countries and 17 percent were from non-European countries,” reports Antje Vollmer. “In total, we had user groups from 34 countries, which is an astonishing number.”
The fact that researchers from abroad conducted their experiments at BESSY II even in the corona year 2021 underlines the attractiveness of the photon source and the experimental stations, some of which are unique worldwide. “It also shows that the users here are very well looked after by dedicated scientists at the experimental stations and are happy to come back.”
New remote services at BESSY II
To ensure that research could continue despite the travel bans, new remote services were offered at many experimental stations. Users submitted samples and took part in their experiments virtually. “Our beamline supervisors organised this service at very short notice to ensure that socially relevant research could continue wherever possible,” says Vollmer. A total of 27 percent of all experiments were conducted remotely or with remote participation.
The figures at a glance
- 1400 visiting user groups from 34 countries
- 67 percent of measurement time for external research projects
- 30 percent of user groups from other European countries
- 17 percent of user groups from non-European countries
- 6000 hours available for research at BESSY II
- 37 experimental stations provided with light (via 25 beamlines)
Altmetric highlights at BESSY II
Altmetric measures the attention that scientific publications attract on the Internet. It counts how many times the online link (doi) to a specialist publication is posted on Twitter, Reddit, Mendeley, blogs and forums. For topics in physics, an Altmetric score above 100 is considered unusual.
The three BESSY-related short news items that got the highest Altmetric scores (2021) are:
- DESY X-ray lightsource identifies promising candidates for COVID drugs, Data from the Macromolecular Crystallography team at BESSY II, Altmetric score: 542, Science - Link to paper
- Water as a metal - detected at BESSY II , In-house research at BESSY II, Altmetric score: 509, Nature -Link to paper
- World’s first video recording of a space-time crystal, Work of a Max Planck Society group at BESSY II, Altmetric score: 314, Physical Review Letters - Link to paper
- Magnetic imaging: Micro-flowers increase the local magnetic fieldMaterials with magnetic nanostructures have many potential applications such as in spintronics. To explore such materials, nanoscale magnetic-sensitive imaging techniques are very useful, but up to now only weak magnetic fields could be applied during the imaging process. Now an international collaboration led by Dr. Sergio Valencia, HZB, has developed an approach that overcomes this limitation. The team designed tiny magnetic flux concentrators (MFCs), into which the sample is placed. The geometry of the MFCs resembles a flower with a number of petals which focus the applied magnetic field into its center. This greatly expands the magnetic field range available during imaging, and so the range of magnetic systems that can be investigated. The micro-flowers, enhancing magnetic fields locally, can find application in different nanometric magnetic microscopy techniques.
- Disorder creates new properties in compound semiconductorsAn international research team has demonstrated that the intrinsic disorder of the compound semiconductor CuInSnS₄ can be exploited to influence its optical properties. While the atomic vibrations also sense the local disorder, their response is averaged over many different local environments and therefore appear isotropic, as expected for a cubic crystal. In contrast, the optical excitations, known as excitons, are much more sensitive to the local arrangement of atoms. Surprisingly, they show a direction-dependent optical response even though the average crystal structure is cubic. These findings shed new light on the relationship between disorder and material properties, opening up new options for targeted 'disorder engineering' in optoelectronic and photocatalytic devices.
- Superconducting TES array X-ray spectrometer goes into operation at BESSY IIEurope's first and only TES-spectrometer at a synchrotron source is now in operation at BESSY II, developed within a collaboration between the HZB, the MPI-CEC (Mühlheim-an-der-Ruhr, Germany) and the NIST (Boulder CO, USA). The photon detection efficiency of the new instrument exceeds that of wavelength-dispersive X-ray emission spectrometers by a factor of 100 to 1000. It will be used to investigate the electronic properties of atomically thin layers, nanostructures and highly diluted atomic and molecular samples. The team is looking forward to receiving exciting research proposals from the user community.