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At last-the Light Fantastic! Members of the Midwest Universities Collaborative Access Team are catching some great rays these days-the most powerful X-ray beams in the world. They're using the brilliant, highly focused beams to investigate the molecular makeup of materials ranging from magnets, ceramics and soils to proteins, drugs and asteroid dust. After a 10-year cooperative effort, the MUCAT undulator beam line is up and running at the Advanced Photon Source, located at DOE's Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. "The beam line is operational. We're taking data, getting results and writing papers," says Alan Goldman, an Ames Laboratory senior physicist and chair of the Iowa State University department of physics and astronomy. Goldman heads MUCAT, a group of scientists from eight Midwestern universities and one German institute who developed the undulator beam line for one of the 35 sectors making up the APS experiment hall. MUCAT member institutions are Ames Lab/ISU, University of Missouri-Columbia, Washington University, State University of New York at Stony Brook, University of Wisconsin, Michigan State University, Kent State University, Georgia Tech and the F.Z. Juelich institute. Through the new beam line, MUCAT researchers can tap into the synchrotron radiation generated by the APS storage ring's electron beam and use the strong X-rays the beam sheds with a variety of specialized equipment. Goldman and fellow researchers Doug Robinson, Eric Zoellner and Didier Wermeille, all Ames Lab/ISU MUCAT members, are using a four-circle diffractometer to perform magnetic X-ray scattering measurements that will help better determine the magnetic structure of various materials. An innovative compact furnace designed by Ames Lab researchers will fit on the four-circle diffractometer to take advantage of the strong X-rays funneled through the undulator beam line. The furnace allows high-temperature and high-energy powder diffraction studies of complex materials at various temperatures, while maintaining laboratory processing conditions. Coming on-line at the beam line is the liquid surface reflectometer developed by Ames Lab physicist David Vaknin. The novel device will be used with APS X-rays to study the structure of ultrathin layers of organic materials. A new surface science chamber funded by the National Science Foundation will be installed this summer by MUCAT members from the University of Missouri-Columbia and Georgia Tech. It will be used to study the surface properties of new materials. Also this summer, the F.Z. Juelich institute will fund and install a high-energy side station that will supply X-rays with energies up to 120 kilovolts, allowing deeper penetration of the sample under investigation. Recently, MUCAT received funding to build a bending magnet beam line that will make possible a wide variety of standard scattering and spectroscopy techniques. Construction of the new beam line will be done by Ames Lab/ISU, Michigan State University, University of Wisconsin and Washington University. "The APS is a remarkable tool," says Goldman. "It has wide applications to many fields, allowing for collaborative research efforts among different disciplines. We're going to welcome anyone to come out and do some work." Submitted by DOE's Ames Laboratory |
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