After 22 years of brilliant science, at 8am on the 30th of September 2023, the SLS went into temporary shutdown as the SLS 2.0 upgrade began. In the video series #ThankYouSLS, seven beamline scientists from PSI looked back on a few of the many discoveries made possible by light from the SLS.
Now in a new video series #ExcitedAboutSLS, the same researchers tell us why they can’t wait for the SLS 2.0 upgrade. Across the diverse applications, stretching from molecular biology to quantum materials, the researchers look forward to faster experiments, higher resolution, and more realistic conditions. With this, the light of SLS 2.0 - and the thousands of scientists from around the world that use it - will address societal challenges such as health and the energy transition.
Between 2007 and 2023, light from the SLS enabled around ten thousand protein structures of biological and medicinal significance to be solved. SLS 2.0 also promises such an impact to the field of structural biology. The new beam will have a higher flux: this means more photons passing through a given area each second.
Vincent Olieric has been a scientist at the protein crystallography beamlines since 2007. He is excited that the increased photon flux will allow them to run their experiments faster. This will help industry users to develop more effective drugs and antibiotics by speeding up the process of drug discovery. The higher flux will also enable protein crystallographers such as Vincent to witness macromolecules in action using time-resolved crystallography. Among other things, Vincent is looking forward to using this to investigate how enzymes catalyse biological reactions.
SLS also enables the study of catalysts and other complex chemical processes under real-world operating environments using operando X-ray spectroscopy. This can reveal, for example, how catalyst structure affects performance: information essential for optimising catalytic processes.
Maarten Nachtegaal leads the Operando X-ray Spectroscopy group at PSI. He is excited about SLS 2.0 because a new beamline, the Debye beamline, will be added to the SLS portfolio. This beamline will take advantage of the higher X-ray energies available after the upgrade to provide new techniques to the user community. Maarten looks forward to studying materials and systems such as catalysts and batteries with improved precision and under more realistic operating conditions. With high throughput and quick access at the beamline, these studies will benefit the energy transition.
With the light of the SLS, scientists have developed new technologies to study the structure and nature of materials. Marianne Liebi leads the Structure and Mechanics of Advanced Materials group and is a tenure track assistant professor at EPFL. In the last video, she thanks SLS for the light that enabled her and colleagues to develop a revolutionary method to study the arrangement of nanostructures in macroscopic samples. Known as tensor tomography, the method reveals information on hierarchical materials such as bone, which show ordering on different length scales.
Marianne is excited about how the upgrade will take tensor tomography even further. Researchers will be able to study samples much faster and with higher resolution at the cSAXS beamline. Furthermore, tensor tomography will also be available at the new endstation, Vespa at the PX-I beamline. This will allow for even faster measurements and cryo-cooling. With this, they will be able to measure samples that now take 24 hours in less than two hours. This will benefit biomedical applications, such as ongoing studies into osteoporosis, since researchers will now be able to measure a statistically relevant number of samples.
The SLS also enables insights into a completely different type of material: quantum materials. By scrutinising the intricate behaviours of electrons, these breakthroughs aid our understanding of phenomena such as high temperature superconductivity. Thorsten Schmitt is leader of the Spectroscopy of Quantum Materials group at PSI. In the last video, he spoke about discovering a new quasiparticle called the orbiton. This discovery at the ADRESS beamline used resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS), which they could push to a very high energy resolution.
Thorsten is excited about SLS 2.0 because the increased brightness will enable his team to obtain X-ray beams of much smaller sizes. This will enable researchers drastically increase the resolution of RIXS and other soft X-ray spectroscopy experiments. This will open the technique up to new classes of quantum materials, including quantum technology devices and two-dimensional exfoliated Van der Waals materials.
X-ray tomography at the TOMCAT beamline reveals the microscopic structure of diverse materials and systems in three-dimensions and in real-time. The applications are diverse and range from the beating wings of flies and beating hearts to magma flow and five-hundred-million-year-old fossils.
As part of the SLS 2.0 upgrade, the TOMCAT beamline will receive an upgrade: in fact, it will become two beamlines. Beamline scientist Federica Marone is excited how the new machines will enable hundreds of samples in a day to be imaged with enhanced contrast and image quality. With this, the beamline will be able to offer efficient virtual pathology capabilities to the medical community.
Prior to the upgrade, Federica explains that they often had to adapt the study system to the experimental environment: for instance, by slowing down processes or making samples smaller. With the higher flux and beam energy at the new TOMCAT 2.0 beamlines, it will be possible to study more realistic systems and faster processes.
With these capabilities, Federica looks forward to addressing the energy challenges faced by our society, for example through realistic studies of charging and discharging in batteries and of water-phase dynamics in fuel cells.
Time-resolved measurements can reveal how electrons move in functional materials. Beamline scientist Grigory Smolentsev is excited about SLS 2.0 because the increased photon flux will mean that shorter snapshots can be taken. At the superXAS beamline, pump-probe X-ray emission experiments in the nanosecond-microsecond time range will become possible. This will allow exploration of photo-induced reactions such as water splitting and hydrogen production.
At the Materials Sciences beamline, scientists and industrial partners shed light on the atomic structure of a technologically interesting materials, ranging from geological samples to alloys for 3D printing. In his last video, scientist Nicola Casati recounted the challenge of characterising the mineral content of 50 000 geological samples in one week for a mining company.
Nicola is excited about SLS 2.0, because the improved brilliance of the X-ray beam will enable his team to carry out such experiments with even greater speed, ease, and reproducibility.
With advances in optic controls and detectors, they will be able to better pinpoint the location and behaviour of selected atoms within materials. This will enable scientists from industry and academia to collect high-quality data sets in more complex samples and processes. These new capabilities will enable a better understanding of the structure of materials. This is pivotal to developing the technology of tomorrow.
Why are you excited about SLS 2.0? Join us looking forward to more brilliant light for science by sharing these on social media with #ExcitedAboutSLS!
Text and Videos: Miriam Arrell and Federica Ricatto
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