Before Your Beamtime

 There are a number of factors to consider before arrival to ensure that you get the best out of your beamtime. 

• If you are bringing your own sample environment or carrying out a non-standard experiment on I11*, we require plenty of notice to ensure we have assessed all of the risks, prepared/ordered relevant equipment and have sufficient support available from other Diamond groups eg. computing. Once your beamtime has been approved please liase with your local contact well before your beamtime (> 2 months) to discuss arrangements and possibly ofline commissioning and integration of equipment. 

* Non-standard experiments include any extreme temperatures (outside those achieveable using the hot air blower (RT-1000C) or Cryostream (80 - 500 K)), all gases, energy/wavelength changes, laser experiments, beam size changes, resonance experiments or your own sample environments. Radioactive or explosive materials are also included in this category and will be reviewed on a case by case basis in collaboration with the health physics and safety groups at Diamond 

Checklist for beamtime

• Highly absorbing samples may prevent you from obtaining Rietveld refinement-quality data. Please check this in advance of your beamtime using online absorption calculators for an energy of 15 keV/0.826 Angstroms. If your sample is too absorbing you can switch to a smaller diameter capillary or consult with beamline staff for alternative methods.
• Particle size will greatly impact the quality of the data, especially for experiments where the sample is not spinning at high speeds (eg. ceratin sample cells such as high pressure and low pressure gas cells, flow cell, PheniX cryostat) 
• If you are preparing your capillaries in your own lab, please ensure the final sealed capillary is between 15 - 40 mm long to ensure it will fit in our sample holders. 
• The choice of capillary material is dictated by the experiment you wish to do and your sample. Standard room temperature and cryostream measurements will work with both quartz and borosilicate capillaries, but high temperature measurements require quartz or sapphire capillaries. Extreme low temperature experiments will be carried out on aluminium wires.
• For all gas experiments - please confirm your gases with your local contact a MINIMUM of two months before your beamtime as we require a long lead time to order gases.
• Our support laboratory covers a wide range of science and so we may not have the usual chemicals, materials or equipment you might expect. It is best to double check your requirements with your local contact well in advance.