BESSY II resumes operation after a long shutdown
The extensive work during the shutdown was completed on time. A great occasion to celebrate and say thank you to all those involved.
© HZB/V. Mai
On 30 August, BESSY II ligth source will resume user operation: the research centre will then welcome guest researchers from all over the world and support them in their various experiments. The 14-week shutdown was the longest in BESSY II history. Among other works, the main supply was completely renewed. The successful completion of the work was celebrated with all those involved.
"14 weeks of shutdown - we've never actually had such a long interruption at BESSY II," says Ingo Müller, who coordinated the work during the shutdown with Christian Jung. But there was a lot to do during this time. To ensure a reliable power supply for the storage ring in the future, it was necessary to replace the low-voltage main supply. In addition, new chillers were also installed during the shutdown. They ensure that the air conditioning in the electron storage ring runs reliably.
Read more about the work during the shutdown here.
"Our machine has been running again for almost two weeks now. We are in the middle of commissioning and are doing everything we can to ensure that users will receive the BESSY light beam in the usual quality for their experiments from 30 August onwards," reports Ingo Müller.
The punctual and successful completion of the work was also a reason to celebrate. All the staff involved at HZB and the external companies met on 23 August at BESSY II's forecourt for currywurst & chips - a typical Berlin delicacy!
By the way, BESSY II was a visitor magnet during the shutdown. We were delighted to welcome high-ranking delegations. For example from Singapore, Brasil and Sweden and many visitors at the Long Night of the Sciences.
- Spintronics at BESSY II: Domain walls in magnetic nanowiresMagnetic domains walls are known to be a source of electrical resistance due to the difficulty for transport electron spins to follow their magnetic texture. This phenomenon holds potential for utilization in spintronic devices, where the electrical resistance can vary based on the presence or absence of a domain wall. A particularly intriguing class of materials are half metals such as La2/3Sr1/3MnO3 (LSMO) which present full spin polarization, allowing their exploitation in spintronic devices. Still the resistance of a single domain wall in half metals remained unknown. Now a team from Spain, France and Germany has generated a single domain wall on a LSMO nanowire and measured resistance changes 20 times larger than for a normal ferromagnet such as Cobalt.
- Graphene on titanium carbide triggers a novel phase transitionResearchers have discovered a Lifshitz-transition in TiC, driven by a graphene overlayer, at the photon source BESSY II. Their study sheds light on the exciting potential of 2D materials such as graphene and the effects they can have on neighboring materials through proximity interactions.
- How much cadmium is contained in cocoa beans?Cocoa beans can absorb toxic heavy metals such as cadmium from the soil. Some cultivation areas, especially in South America, are polluted with these heavy metals, in some cases considerably. In combining different X-ray fluorescence techniques, a team at BESSY II has now been able to non-invasively measure for the first time where cadmium accumulates exactly in cocoa beans: Mainly in the shell. Further investigations show that the processing of the cocoa beans can have a great influence on the concentration of heavy metals.