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In: BESSYBeamlineScientists, Careers, Energymaterials, Lightsources

It is a Russian-German dipole beamline, part of the Russian-German Laboratory at BESSY II. It covers a soft X-ray photon energy range up to 1200 eV. It ends with a fixed experimental station RGL-PES that offers a multi-technique approach for the investigation of the electronic, chemical and structural properties of materials: X-ray photoemission spectroscopy and X-ray absorption in all possible modes (fluorescence yield, total and partial electron yields).Read More →

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The beamline is called PM4. As a dipole beamline, it provides a moderate photon flux over a wide range of photon energies, in our case in the vacuum ultraviolet/soft X-ray regime. It serves the fixed end-station called LowDosePES. As the name suggests, its specialty is photoemission spectroscopy (PES) at low X-ray dose. Read More →

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In: Energymaterials, International, Lightsources, Summerstudents

Thermoplastic ionomer materials such as Nafion do have many talents: they can be used as membranes for proton exchange in fuel cells, but they have also attracted attention as shape memory materials: Via external stimuli such as heat or an electric field, it is possible to trigger a change in shapes. Applications in textiles, biomedicine, aerospace, sensors and coatings are possible. Nafion: a membrane with shape memory Nafion is one of those materials: as a membrane in a fuel cell, its high proton conductivity allows a fast pass of hydrogen ions (protons). And its internal shape plays a crucial role. Now a team from Brazil hasRead More →

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by Jonas Böhm The last finishing touches are being made to the cryogenic undulator CPMU-17 before it will be installed in the BESSY II storage ring next week. A good moment to look back. The long way of undulators: 70 years old and still up-to-date Home of the first undulator was Stanford. Its linear accelerator (you can see its tunnel in the image) is claimed to be “the world’s most straight object”. In 1952, the Austrian scientist Hans Motz and his team conducted the first experiment, in which a 100-Mev electron beam from the Stanford linear accelerator passed through the undulator. Light radiated by the beam wasRead More →

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by Katharina Kolatzki With the new cryogenic undulator CPMU-17 being installed into the BESSY II storage ring, I thought it a good moment to get everyone who may not be that familiar with this essential part of the synchrotron up to speed. What is an Undulator? By now, you might have noticed that undulators are pretty cool things (even the room temperature devices) that are an essential part of synchrotron sources such as BESSY II. In order to understand a little bit more about them, here is a brief introduction to undulators. Synchrotron sources provide especially brilliant light that can be used to examine aRead More →

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In: International, Students, Summerstudents

If you try to search for “PSO” abbreviation in wiki you may find Pacific Symphony Orchestra or Phase-shift oscillator. However, my project at HZB is about neither music nor electricity, but mathematics. For almost a month here I have been working on an algorithm called Particle Swarm Optimization method and I would like you to have some impression of it.  Optimization Actually, the definition of optimization problem is quite simple. One has a function of n-variables f(x1, …, xn) and seeks to find such values of variables that give minimum to the function. However, the solution is not that simple, because in general you cannotRead More →

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For years, the researchers at HZB have been working intensively on upgrading the electron storage ring into a variable pulse length storage ring (BESSY VSR). Now things are becoming concrete: On 30 July BESSY II is switched off for ten weeks. Then the first modifications in the experiment hall are due to be carried out in order to realize BESSY VSR. “We have four or five very tough but also very exciting years ahead of us,” project manager Andreas Jankowiak said upon BESSY VSR’s approval in June 2017. With these words, he hinted at the mountain of work the various teams at HZB are nowRead More →

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The Summer Student programme is on the way. After the first two weeks, I have had the opportunity to discover, not only my project, but also, the opportunity to meet colleagues from all over the world, and to discover a country and an unknown city to me until now. The title of the project is “Synthesis and tomographic analysis of metallic cellular materials”. The aim of this project is to produce cellular materials of titanium and magnesium with different percentages of porosity and different size of pores, which have potential applications in the replacement of hard tissue. To succeed in this project, I am learningRead More →

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It was after a telephone call in 2003 that Manuela Klaus’s career took off. Right about the time Klaus had just graduated in materials sciences from TU Berlin, the phone rang in the office of Christoph Genzel of the Microstructure and Residual Stress Analysis department. “It was a drill bit manufacturing company from Baden-Württemberg calling,” the department head recollects. The callers needed help with improving their drill bits: they wanted to measure the residual stress of the material at the precise points where the bits are most stressed – “and I said there are no methods to do that yet. But I know of justRead More →