New materials analysis facility under construction at Diamond

Commenting on this development:
 

Dr Elizabeth Rowsell (Director, Johnson Matthey Technology Centre) said “This is an exciting development for Johnson Matthey research, we chose to bring our investment to Diamond’s I14 beamline to further strengthen our extensive collaborations in advanced characterisation”;
 

Professor Andrew Hamilton, (Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University), said: “Bringing together these powerful instruments in one place will be hugely beneficial to researchers, both in academia and industry, who are studying materials at the atomic scale. This new facility could lead to advances in many exciting research areas including graphene technology and the development of cleaner, greener fuels.”
 

Mr. Koichi Fukuyama (Director JEOL Europe) said “This is a wonderful opportunity for JEOL and we are excited to be supporting the advanced characterisation research facilities that are being planned for the benefit of both academic and industrial scientists from the UK and beyond.”   

 

Professor Andrew Harrison (CEO Diamond Light Source) said “We welcome closer engagement with UK companies such as JM. This development is part of a more general trend to develop strategic partnerships with industry and university, often underpinned by investment in complementary equipment or people, to exploit more fully our synchrotron facilities”;
 

The I14 hard X-ray nanoprobe beamline will offer experimental facilities that are world leading. It will be the third of four beamlines at Diamond that need to extend beyond the iconic silver doughnut shaped building due to the type of experiments it will enable scientists to carry out.  To maximise the distance from the focusing optic to the sample, I14 will extend beyond the main building to a distance of approximately 175m. The beamline will provide a state of the art facility in which a focused x-ray spot is positioned or scanned over a sample. Samples under investigation will include a wide range of organic and inorganic materials. The potential applications are extremely varied and include materials science, in areas such as new polymers, magnetic and nano-structured materials. Earth and environmental science and geochemistry, with potential research topics including aerosols, minerals, sediments, soils and bio-remediation. The beamline and associated microscopy facilities will also be able to investigate new energy sources and area of biological, biotechnological and biomedical science such as new biomaterials and the elemental imaging of cells.
 

The facility will have the potential to investigate samples under both static or real (eg wet, heated, in situ strain) conditions. The aim being to allow scientists to obtain both structural and chemically-specific information.