News and Research Highlights

Latest announcements about Photon Science at DESY as well as important research or technical news can be found here (or in the archive of past years):

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 ...