21 June 2024
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 process, the researchers ...
19 June 2024
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 performed at the ...10 June 2024
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 molecular level helps to ...01 June 2024
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 PETRA III as well ...24 May 2024
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 and function of ...24 May 2024
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 the Earth more ...23 May 2024
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 (CELIA) and the ...21 May 2024
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 Hamburg) is reporting a ...14 May 2024
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 to study the main ...08 May 2024
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 journal Nano ...25 April 2024
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 incorporate wide bandgap ...22 April 2024
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 has investigated the ...
22 March 2024
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 that a 20-fold ...13 March 2024
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 and quantify the ...28 February 2024
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 (Germany), University of ...23 February 2024
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 and temperature ...22 February 2024
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, and SOLARIS. They ...16 February 2024
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 hundred attoseconds ...09 February 2024
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 III beamline P66 and ...31 January 2024
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 physics about the ...19 January 2024
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 at DESY's ...18 January 2024
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 possible to identify even ...11 January 2024
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 reactivity of the active ...10 January 2024
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 journal Nature ...08 January 2024
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 with high temporal ...