HZB Newsroom

Swedish national synchrotron laboratory MAX IV and Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) with BESSY II light source jointly announce the signing of a 5-year Cooperation Agreement. The new agreement establishes a framework to strengthen cooperation for operational and technological development in the highlighted fields of accelerator research and development, beamlines and optics, endstations and sample environments as well as digitalisation and data science.

Future settlements on the moon will need energy, which could be supplied by photovoltaics. However, launching material into space is expensive – transporting one kilogram to the moon costs one million euros. But there are also resources on the moon that can be used. A research team led by Dr. Felix Lang of the University of Potsdam and Dr. Stefan Linke of the Technical University of Berlin have now produced the required glass from ‘moon dust’ (regolith) and coated it with perovskite. This could save up to 99 percent of the weight needed to produce PV modules on the moon. The team tested the radiation tolerance of the solar cells at the proton accelerator of the HZB.

The SEALab team at HZB has achieved a world first by generating an electron beam from a multi-alkali (Na-K-Sb) photocathode and accelerating it to relativistic energies in a superconducting radiofrequency accelerator (SRF photoinjector). This is a real breakthrough and opens up new options for accelerator physics.

Together with the University of the Bundeswehr Munich, the HZB has set up a new beamline for preclinical research. It will enable experiments on biological samples on innovative radiation therapies with protons.

A team of leading experts in medical physics, physics and radiotherapy, including HZB physicist Prof. Andrea Denker and Charité medical physicist Dr Jens Heufelder, has published a review article on ocular particle therapy. The article appeared in the Red Journal, one of the most prestigious journals in the field. It outlines the special features of this form of eye therapy, explains the state of the art and current research priorities, provides recommendations for the delivery of radiotherapy and gives an outlook on future developments.

Thirteen months ago, HZB fell victim to a criminal cyberattack that also took BESSY II light source and the instruments in the experimental hall out of operation. BESSY II was up and running again after just three weeks and the instruments were gradually put back into operation. Now HZB can report some good news: All experimental stations are again integrated into the new IT networks and can record data.