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.
- Catalysis research with the X-ray microscope at BESSY IIContrary to what we learned at school, some catalysts do change during the reaction: for example, certain electrocatalysts can change their structure and composition during the reaction when an electric field is applied. The X-ray microscope TXM at BESSY II in Berlin is a unique tool for studying such changes in detail. The results help to develop innovative catalysts for a wide range of applications. One example was recently published in Nature Materials. It involved the synthesis of ammonia from waste nitrates.
- BESSY II: Magnetic ‘microflowers’ enhance magnetic fields locallyA flower-shaped structure only a few micrometres in size made of a nickel-iron alloy can concentrate and locally enhance magnetic fields. The size of the effect can be controlled by varying the geometry and number of 'petals'. This magnetic metamaterial developed by Dr Anna Palau's group at the Institut de Ciencia de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB) in collaboration with her partners of the CHIST-ERA MetaMagIC project, has now been studied at BESSY II in collaboration with Dr Sergio Valencia. Such a device can be used to increase the sensitivity of magnetic sensors, to reduce the energy required for creating local magnetic fields, but also, at the PEEM experimental station, to study samples under much higher magnetic fields than currently possible.
- HZB-magazine lichtblick - the new issue is out!In the cover story we introduce Astrid Brandt. She is Head of User Coordination at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin. She and her team keep constant track of applications, measurement times and publications of the 1000 guest researchers who come to BESSY II each year.
She has always been fascinated by science. But she has also never let go of her other passion, which is music.