18 November 2024
PETRA IV project - moving forward towards funding
The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has officially confirmed PETRA IV is participating in the “National Prioritization Procedure for Large-scale Research Infrastructures”. A team from DESY has prepared a short concept according to the BMBF's specifications and submitted it according to schedule by 25 October 2024. The concept of the conversion of PETRA III into a ...12 November 2024
André L. C Conceição received the Gold Poster Award at the SAS2024 conference
At the XIX International Small Angle Scattering Conference (SAS2024), DESY scientist André Conceição was honoured with the Gold Award for his outstanding poster presentation entitled "Quantifying Myelin in Multiple Sclerosis by SAXS-CT". The SAS2024 conference took place from 3 to 8 November 2024 in Taipei (Taiwan) and is one of the most important gatherings in the field. It is held every ...06 November 2024 · Research Highlight
Exploring the nanoverse by molecular testing probe
A research team has taken a close look at catalytic surfaces at the DESY NanoLab. In doing so, they have not only learnt more about the exact processes that take place during catalysis, but have also tried out ways of positively influencing these processes. The team presents its results in the scientific journal ACS Nano.Catalysts are important promotors in many industrial ...
05 November 2024
ERC Synergy Grant for Thomas Marlovits
Scientist Thomas Marlovits (DESY/CSSB/UKE) together with three other researchers, Edith Houben from Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, Tracy Palmer from Newcastle University and John McKinney, PhD, EPFL Lausanne received an ERC Synergy grant for their project ‘CombaT7’, for which they will receive funding of 10.8 millionn euro to be used over a period of six years. The project aims to provide a ...30 October 2024
Access to attoseconds and more: DESY joins Lasers4EU
The network Lasers4EU, which helps scientists gain access to laser lab setups across the continent, will now include five laser setups at DESY that specialise in ultrafast science. The setups are based on tabletop lasers that either are pulsed to access the attosecond timescale or a billionth of a billionth of a second or that generate secondary radiation that can attain ultrashort processes or ...25 October 2024 · Research Highlight
Towards new reaction pathways
The Attosecond Science group at CFEL at DESY has developed a novel light source capable of producing extremely short pulses for the investigation of UV-induced molecular dynamics with unprecedented temporal resolution. Scientists from DESY and the University of Hamburg describe their unique observations in Nature Communications.Ultraviolet (UV) radiation penetrating our ...
25 October 2024 · Research Highlight
New Insights into Air Pollution Formation
A team of researchers at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin, the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute/Hamad Bin Khalifa University, the synchrotron sources PETRA III in Hamburg and SOLEIL in Gif-sur-Yvette, the Sorbonne University in Paris, the ETH Zurich, and the PSI Center for Energy and Environmental Science have made a groundbreaking discovery in ...24 October 2024
DESY increases cooperation with Indian partners at PETRA III
DESY and numerous Indian research institutes want to work more closely together in the future. To this end, representatives of these institutes have made an agreement during a delegation visit of the German federal government to New Delhi. In the context of the seventh German–Indian governmental consultations and in celebration of 50 years of Indian-German scientific collaboration, a ...08 October 2024 · Research Highlight
Expanding instead of contracting
An astonishing property of trees is their ability to transport water and dissolved nutrients from their roots all the way up to their crowns, sometimes dozens of metres above, without the need for a mechanical pump. The underlying mechanism is ingenious: trees have a system of fine capillaries through which the water can rise from below the ground to the very tips of their branches. This ...30 August 2024
The SRI2024 conference in Hamburg ends with prestigious prizes
Jumpei Yamada from Osaka University, Japan, and Agostino Marinelli from the National Accelerator Laboratory SLAC, USA, were honoured at the SRI2024 conference in Hamburg for their important contributions to advance research using free electron X-ray lasers. The SRI conference is regarded as the world's most important exchange forum for experimenters, developers and operators of large X-ray ...28 August 2024 · Research Highlight
Quantum communicator molecule shows further promise
A family of molecules known to take in the rays and flex – fitting, then, that this summer, an international team using the pulsed properties of ultrafast optical lasers and synchrotron light sources like PETRA III at DESY could publish new findings about them. This family of molecules, which are inexpensive to synthesise, are thought to be good candidates for being transfer units of quantum ...23 August 2024
SRI 2024: Top elite in X-ray light research meets in Hamburg
From 26 to 30 August 2024, the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY and European XFEL will welcome more than 1,000 experts from all over the world to the 15th International Conference on Instrumentation of Synchrotron Radiation Sources (SRI) at the CCH Congress Centre in Hamburg. The second mayor and Hamburg's Senator for Science, Research and Equality, Katharina Fegebank, and ...26 August 2024
60 years of accelerated research with synchrotron radiation at DESY
The Deutsche Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY is celebrating ‘60 years of research with synchrotron radiation in Hamburg’ with a festive colloquium on 26 August 2024. Around 300 former companions are coming to DESY to mark the occasion. Since commissioning its first particle accelerator in 1964, DESY has been one of the world's pioneers of research with synchrotron light - a special type of X-ray ...21 August 2024
Niklas Pyrlik wins “Best XRD Poster” award at the Denver X-ray Conference 2024
Niklas Pyrlik, a master’s student of the group FS-PETRA at DESY and the University of Hamburg, has been honoured with the “Best XRD Poster” award at the Denver X-ray Conference, having taken place in Colorado (USA) from August 5 to 9, 2024.With short interruptions, Niklas Pyrlik has been part of the group since 2020 and is now close to finishing his master’s degree in ...
13 August 2024 · Research Highlight
Interaction of soft X-rays with aqueous solutions
A new study sheds light on how X-rays cause damage in liquids. The results could help to make radiotherapy or X-ray examinations safer in the long term. An international group of scientists from the University of Kassel, the Fritz Haber Institute (FHI) in Berlin, the University of Heidelberg as well as the Uppsala University (Sweden) worked together and carried out their experiments at the PETRA ...29 July 2024 · Research Highlight
Using PETRA III to watch the disabling of a penicillin killer
Antibiotic resistance is a major and particularly in recent years growing challenge in medicine. Scientists around the world are searching for new and efficient compounds to treat bacterial infections, especially infections caused by multi-resistant bacteria. A research collaboration of scientists from DESY, University Medical Center Eppendorf (UKE) in Hamburg and Universität Hamburg performed ...24 July 2024 · Research Highlight
New Study Explores Magnesium's Interaction with ATP in Water
A recent study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society presents an in-depth analysis of how ATP (adenosine triphosphate) in aqueous solutions interacts with magnesium ions. Conducted by researchers from the Department of Molecular Physics at the Fritz-Haber-Institut (FHI) der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG) in Berlin (Germany), in collaboration with the University of Chemistry and ...23 July 2024 · Research Highlight
Observed live for the first time: Photocatalysts switch off a virus
An international research team led by DESY scientists has been able to observe for the first time how the whitening agent titanium dioxide inactivates viruses. Using various advanced methods, including measurements at the synchrotron light source PETRA III, they were able to precisely reproduce the inactivation process and understand the atomic details by computational simulations. DESY scientist ...22 July 2024
Otto-Haxel Dissertation prize for Kaja Schubert
For her dissertation the DESY physicist Kaja Schubert was awarded the Otto Haxel Dissertation prize 2021 (Rank 3). Kaja completed her doctoral thesis with the title “The electronic structure and deexcitation pathways of biomolecular ions” in Sadia Bari’s former Helmholtz Young Investigators group (now the DESY Photon Science group for “Biomolecules in the Gas Phase”) and at the ...19 July 2024
Andrea Trabattoni becomes a professor at Leibniz University Hanover
DESY and CFEL scientist Andrea Trabattoni has accepted an appointment as Associate Professor in Ultrafast Photoelectron Science at Leibniz University Hanover (LUH). Working as a researcher at DESY Photon Science since 2016 and as a junior professor at LUH since 2022, he was recently awarded an ERC starting grant to develop novel laser-based imaging tools for large molecules and interfaces with ...10 July 2024 · Research Highlight
Improving solar cells with a newly developed measuring method
Perovskites are among the greatest hopes in the solar industry. These materials could replace silicon as the basic semiconducting component of solar cells, as they are just as readily available and much easier to process. Alternatively, the two could be used in a paired set as a so-called tandem cell: The perovskite solar cell at the top converts visible light into electricity, while the silicon ...09 July 2024 · Research Highlight
3D printed X-ray nano lens allows high-resolution imaging of microchips down to transistor level
A newly developed X-ray imaging method can now visualise the internal structure of various samples, such as microchips or catalyst particles, with nanometre resolution over a large field of view without causing damage. This new technique, which was mainly developed at DESY´s high-brilliance X-ray source PETRA III, is of particular interest to the industry as a new characterisation method for ...01 July 2024
DESY Rearcher Simone Techert has been elected as the newest Fellow of the Royal Society
Simone Techert has been named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), a professional society based in the United Kingdom with over 50,000 members worldwide.Each year, the Fellows of the Royal Society elect up to 85 new Fellows. The designation of Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) is given to scientists who have made 'a substantial contribution to the ...
28 June 2024 · Research Highlight
On the way to the quantum memory: research group stores X-ray flashes
Light is an excellent carrier of information used not only for classical communication technologies but increasingly also for quantum applications such as quantum computing. However, processing light signals is far more difficult compared to the more common electronic signals. In experiments at DESY´s brilliant X-ray source PETRA III and at the ESRF, an international team of researchers has ...26 June 2024 · Research Highlight
Possible early diagnosis of Parkinson's disease: Magnetic resonance imaging shows iron distribution in brain regions
The neurotransmitter dopamine is primarily known as the happiness hormone that controls our motivation in the brain's reward system. However, the neurotransmitter also acts as lubricating oil for our fine motor skills and regulates the movements of our muscles. If dopamine-producing nerve cells die off, affected people experience movement disorders such as tremors or muscle stiffness. The ...21 June 2024 · Research Highlight
In the focus of X-rays: new materials for energy transition
Researchers at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY have developed a method to rapidly test new materials for the hydrogen industry and analyse their properties down to the atomic level. They were the first to test so-called high-entropy alloys for their corrosion resistance to hydrogen, and found that they may outperform the alloys commonly used in the industry.For the ...
20 June 2024
Jackson Barp wins Student Award at the IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference 2024
Jackson Luis Barp Junior, a PhD student of the PETRA III group at DESY and Universität Hamburg, has won the highly coveted award for the best student paper in the area “Characterization Methods” of the IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (IEEE PVSC) that took place in June 2024 in Seattle (Washington, USA).Jackson Barp is a nanoscientist at DESY and is pursuing his PhD at ...
19 June 2024 · Research Highlight
The dark side of transmission X-ray microscopy
X-ray microscopes are essential for examining components and materials because they can be used to detect changes and details in the material. Until now, however, it has been difficult to detect small cracks or tiny inclusions in the images. By developing a new method, researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon are now able to visualise such changes in the nanometre regime.The experiments were ...10 June 2024 · Research Highlight
How many water molecules does it take to dissolve hydrochloric acid?
Scientists from DESY have made a significant step towards understanding the solvation processes of hydrochloric acid (HCl) at the molecular scale. HCI is a prototypical acid that is often used for research and in industry and also plays a part in atmospheric chemistry – for example in the growth and formation of aerosol particles. A precise understanding of the chemical processes at the ...01 June 2024 · Research Highlight
Clays transport more water into the Earth’s interior than we thought
Nobody knows how much water is contained in the Earth’s interior. It’s 6400 kilometres from the surface to the centre, but the deepest point we can get to is mere 12 kilometres, so most estimations are based on assumptions and extrapolations about the composition of our planet’s mantle and core. A study by a research team led by Yongjae Lee from Yonsei University (South Korea), conducted at ...24 May 2024 · Research Highlight
Introducing: the first practical Terahertz-powered ultrafast photogun
A team of researchers from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, DESY and Universität Hamburg have developed the first practical Terahertz (THz)-driven photogun. Electron guns enabling ultrashort and -bright electron bunches have recently lead to the implementation of ultrafast electron diffraction instruments as a complementary technology to X-ray free-electron lasers for determining the structure ...24 May 2024 · Research Highlight
Crystal nucleation of noble gases in X-ray light
An international team including scientists from DESY has taken a closer look at the formation of the first crystallisation of nuclei in supercooled liquids at European XFEL in Schenefeld near Hamburg. They found: The formation starts much later than previously assumed. The findings could help to better understand the creation of ice in clouds in the future and to describe some processes inside ...23 May 2024 · Research Highlight
Scientists decipher the contribution of electrons to molecular chirality
A new experimental approach provides the long-awaited tools to understand the role of electrons in the molecular chiral reactivity and offers a way to control physical and chemical properties that result from chiral interactions. The study, published in the journal “Nature”, was led by Universität Hamburg and DESY as part of a collaboration with the Centre Laser Intense et Applications ...22 May 2024
New video spotlights pioneers in structural imaging
The “XRD-CT Pioneers”, winners of the Analytical Science Horizon Prize 2023 awarded by the Royal Society of Chemistry are featured in a newly published video. The clip showcases the outstanding achievements in the structural imaging technique called X-ray diffraction computed tomography (XRD-CT) by the British firm Finden Ltd. in collaboration with researchers from PETRA III at DESY and other ...21 May 2024 · Research Highlight
Liquid crystals form nanowires in nanopores
Liquid crystals have become an integral part of our everyday lives. They're not just responsible for the brilliant colours we see on our mobile phones, televisions and computers, but they also play a very important role in many other optical technologies, as they change light interacting with them in a special way. Now a team of researchers led by DESY and Hamburg University of Technology (TU ...14 May 2024 · Research Highlight
Finding the chink in corona’s armour
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in millions of deaths. Despite an unparalleled collaborative research effort that led to effective vaccines and therapies being produced in record-breaking time, a complete understanding of the structure and lifecycle of the coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2 is still lacking. Scientists, also from DESY, used the biolabs and the SPB/SFX instrument at the European XFEL ...08 May 2024 · Research Highlight
Researchers can now accurately measure the emergence and damping of a plasmonic field
An international research team led by Universität Hamburg, DESY and Stanford University has developed a new approach to characterise the electric field of arbitrary plasmonic samples, for example gold nanoparticles. Plasmonic materials are of particular research interest due to their extraordinary efficiency at absorbing light which is crucial for renewable energy and other technologies. In the ...25 April 2024 · Research Highlight
PETRA III helps to develop high temperature capacitive energy storage using anisotropic semicrystalline polymers
Capacitive energy storage materials possess the advantages of high energy density and speedy charge-discharging capability. In particular, polymer-based dielectric materials for high temperature operation condition are increasingly demanded for numerous emerging applications such as electric vehicles or aerospace power conditioning. So far, a common way to improve the energy density is to ...22 April 2024 · Research Highlight
European XFEL elicits secrets from an important nanogel
An international team led by DESY scientist Felix Lehmkühler has utilised the world’s largest X-ray laser European XFEL to scrutinise the properties of an important nanogel that is used in medicine to release drugs in a targeted and controlled manner at the desired location in a patient's body. The team now published the results in the journal Science Advances.The team ...
19 April 2024
DESY researcher Robin Santra elected as AAAS Fellow
Robin Santra, Lead Scientist at DESY (Photon Science), professor of physics at Universität Hamburg and expert in ultrafast processes in intense radiation fields, has received one of the highest scientific honours in the US: he was elected an AAAS Fellow. The "Class of 2023", announced on 18 April, is made up of a total of 502 high-ranking scientists from disciplines such as biology, chemistry, ...22 March 2024 · Research Highlight
AI unveils weak signals from a haze of noise
Researchers from the University of Zurich (UZH) have used convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to effectively filter noise from detector images and hence make scattering signals measured at PETRA III visible that would otherwise be virtually invisible. By using data from the beamline P21.1, the group around Johan Chang, professor at the Physics institute at UZH, trained a deep CNN system such ...13 March 2024 · Research Highlight
New imaging technique at PETRA III enables deeper insights in breast cancer metastasis
A collaborative effort between researchers from DESY, the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), Chalmers University in Sweden and the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland has yielded a cutting-edge multimodal imaging approach to investigate breast cancer tissue. With the help of this technique, researchers can simultaneously extract information about the nanostructure of the tumor ...29 February 2024
Focus on molecular water science - CMWS Water DAYS 2024
The CMWS Water DAYS 2024 took place at DESY in Hamburg from 26-28 February as the 7th general CMWS meeting. More than 80 participants discussed the key challenges in molecular water research and the status and future of the Centre for Molecular Water Science (CMWS).Water is the most important liquid for our life and therefore plays an ...
28 February 2024 · Research Highlight
X-ray studies at PETRA III unveil the physics behind the encapsulation of the coronavirus
The COVID-19 pandemic has a severe ongoing impact on society. Therefore, the development of efficient treatment is crucial for the future while our understanding of the life cycle of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its interaction with its cell host is still comparatively limited. Already since the very beginning of the pandemic, an international team of scientists from DESY, Leipzig University ...23 February 2024 · Research Highlight
Unique combined setup at PETRA III for in-situ ultrasonic measurements at extreme conditions
Probing the Earth’s interior is a difficult task. Direct access to depths greater than 12 km in the crust – so far only reached by the Kola Superdeep borehole – is not nearly enough to reach the mantle below the continental crust. To understand plate tectonic processes, such as earthquakes, knowledge of rocks down to 700 km is required. Notwithstanding, experiments under extreme pressure ...22 February 2024 · Research Highlight
Sodium-ion batteries: How doping works
Sodium-ion batteries still have a number of weaknesses that could be remedied by optimising the battery materials. One possibility is to dope the cathode material with foreign elements. To investigate the effects of doping with Scandium and Magnesium a team from Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin collected data at the X-ray synchrotron sources BESSY II, PETRA III, ...16 February 2024 · Research Highlight
First-ever X-ray attosecond experiment on liquids provides new insights into water’s molecular properties
An international team has performed an attosecond-scale experiment at an X-ray free-electron laser on liquid water for the first time, and the results may change our interpretation of water’s behaviour. The experiment team, led by scientist Linda Young from Argonne National Laboratory in the US, found an unusual signal when they examined liquid water using X-ray flashes that were timed a few ...16 February 2024
'MEGA-EUV' – High-energy laser source for the inspection of microchips
DESY is cooperating with Class 5 Photonics, the Universität Hamburg, Amphos and partners from the semiconductor industry as part of the 'MEGA-EUV' project. The aim of the project is to develop a high-performance, extreme ultraviolet (EUV) beam source that will achieve up to a 1000-fold increase in throughput for the inspection of microchips.Our connected digital world is being ...
09 February 2024 · Research Highlight
Materials research for optical diagnostic windows in future fusion reactors
Magnesium aluminate spinel (MgAl2O4) has received significant practical interest because of the predicted tolerance to ionising irradiation. Therefore, this material is currently on the priority list of the EUROFUSION consortium for optical diagnostic windows in future deuterium-tritium fusion reactors. Investigations of radiative transitions in this material at the PETRA ...31 January 2024 · Research Highlight
International team uncovers a groundbreaking model for the effects of radiation in water systems
What happens when radiation hits water? This is a question that has an impact every time you get an X-ray at the doctor’s office, given you are mostly made of water. A team of theoretical physicists at DESY has worked on data taken by colleagues from Argonne National Laboratory at the LCLS X-ray laser (US) to get a better answer to this question. What they found may settle a controversy in ...30 January 2024
ENCI, the X-ray tomograph that will decode millennia-old texts at the Louvre
Scientists at Universität Hamburg and DESY have developed a globally unique mobile computer tomograph as part of the Cluster of Excellence “Understanding Written Artefacts” (UWA). The researchers call their device ENCI (“Extracting Non-destructively Cuneiform Inscriptions”), a reference to Enki, the Sumerian god of wisdom. With the help of this device, scientists could read for the first ...26 January 2024
DESY Photon Science distinction for exceptional achievements of users goes to Heshmat Noei
On the occasion of the DESY Photon Science Users’ meeting 2024, Heshmat Noei was honoured with the first 'DESY Photon Science User Award'. This award is given to a user or group of users of FLASH and/or PETRA III, and acknowledges singular and exceptional contributions to the general advancement of science using DESY’s large-scale photon science facilities.Dr. Heshmat Noei is ...
24 January 2024
DESY Photon Science Users' meeting 2024 - under a dome
This year, DESY and European XFEL Users’ Meetings have bust out of its usual auditorium setting and instead made its way to the huge tents across the street from DESY. With more than 1100 registrants, the Users’ Meetings are taking advantage of this special event venue ‘Kuppel Hamburg’. On the agenda, under the title of “Research with Synchrotron Radiation and FELs”, over three days ...19 January 2024 · Research Highlight
PETRA III solves decades-old mystery of asteroid impacts
A research team from DESY and the University of Jena has for the first time demonstrated live the formation of the mineral stishovite (a form of silicon dioxide or silica, SiO2), which is often used as a mineral to detect ancient asteroid and meteorite impacts on the Earth's surface. The researchers observed the formation of the mineral using time-resolved X-ray diffraction experiments ...18 January 2024 · Research Highlight
Research team investigates the reaction mechanism for catalytic ammonia production at PETRA III
A research team from Stockholm University, in collaboration with DESY and the Montanuniversität Leoben in Austria, has succeeded for the first time in investigating the surface of iron and ruthenium catalysts in the formation of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen; the results have been published in the scientific journal Nature. With exact knowledge of how these catalysts work, it may be ...12 January 2024
Nobel Laureate Anne L´Huillier visits DESY
Anne L´Huillier from the University of Lund has visited the research centre DESY on 12 January 2024. The physicist, who won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics together with two colleagues for "the experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter", visited DESY and CFEL. She was invited by Francesca Calegari, Lead Scientist at DESY and ...11 January 2024 · Research Highlight
Combined IR spectroscopy and surface X-Ray diffraction setup for chemical and structural in-situ characterisation
Electrocatalysis is the decisive factor for a future energy system based on renewable resources. Typically, the most active electrocatalysts retain a high level of complexity in terms of structure and chemical composition. New analytical approaches are required to advance the characterisation of electrocatalysts under operating conditions. In particular, to correlate the structure with the ...10 January 2024 · Research Highlight
New findings on diamond rain on ice planets
An international team of researchers, including from DESY and led by Mungo Frost from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (U.S.), used the European X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) to gain new insights into the formation and occurrence of diamond rain in ice giants such as Neptune, Uranus, or exoplanets outside of our solar system. The results, which have now been published in the scientific ...08 January 2024 · Research Highlight
Medically relevant nanoparticles move faster in cells than expected
A team of scientists from DESY and Universität Hamburg has discovered in an experiment that gold nanoparticles can move through liquid biological matter faster than expected when coated by the polymer polyethylene glycol (PEG). The data, which were acquired using X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy, reveal both the structure and the dynamics of the nanoparticles in various biological fluids ...