"BESSY is of immense importance for Berlin"
During her summer tour, the Senator also visited BESSY II light source. From left to right: A,.Vollmer (spokeswoman for the BESSY II), I. Czyborra (Senator for Science), B. Rech (Scientific Director) and H. Marx (State Secretary for Science). © HZB / Bettina Ausserhofer
At the end of August, the Senator for Research, Health, and Long-Term Care, Dr Ina Czyborra, together with the State Secretary for Science, Dr Henry Marx, ended her summer tour with a visit to HZB in Adlershof. She publicly declared her political support for the new construction of BESSY III.
Ina Czyborra took an afternoon for intensive discussions with scientists and BESSY II light source. The focus was on the versatility of this large and powerful research infrastructure: from the decoding of protein structures to groundbreaking innovations in the field of renewable energies.
Political support for BESSY III
A central topic was the successor source BESSY III (More information). HZB is planning a 4th generation light source with integrated laboratories, which is to be embedded in the Berlin-Adlershof research campus. The Senator expressly supports this project:
"Once again, I have seen cutting-edge research that is attracting worldwide attention. Adlershof has everything that makes Berlin a unique location - science, research and business in proximity, cooperating and benefiting from each other. [...] This makes it even more important to set the course in the Senate's budget deliberations, which begin in September, to ensure that Berlin remains a centre of cutting-edge research with international appeal in the future. Incidentally, we also need BESSY III for this. The continuation of BESSY is of immense importance for Berlin as a research location. That is why I will do everything I can to ensure that this project is continued."
"We are extremely pleased about such a clear commitment to our plans to build BESSY III in Berlin-Adlershof," says Prof. Bernd Rech, Scientific Director of HZB. "The exchange with the Senator for Science underlines how important the dialogue between science and politics is. Especially when it comes to further advancing cutting-edge research in Berlin!"
- BESSY II: New sample environment allows glimpse into thermocatalytic processesA novel measurement cell allows, for the first time, soft and hard X-ray investigations under high pressures of up to 20 bar and temperatures of up to 400°C. This provides new insights into thermocatalytic processes, such as the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis for producing synthetic fuels. The development of the measurement cell is considered a significant achievement within the Care-O-Sene project.
- 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.