Diamond Light Source - Annual Review 2022/23

72 73 D I A M O N D L I G H T S O U R C E A N N U A L R E V I E W 2 0 2 2 / 2 3 D I A M O N D L I G H T S O U R C E A N N U A L R E V I E W 2 0 2 2 / 2 3 Hamos geometry at Diamond. We have analyser crystals to enable XES from copper- and/or iron-dependent metalloenzymes, and an order out for a set of analyser crystals suitable for Ni-containing enzymes. Dr Orville continues to serve as the life science lead for the UK XFEL project. He delivered a talk at the Royal Society in London on 30 January 2023 as part of the launch event for the Conceptual Design and Options Analysis phase of the project. Comments from the community are always welcome throughout this process. Active Materials Laboratory In 2019 Diamond was awarded a grant by the EPSRC to build an Active Materials Laboratory at the synchrotron as part of the National Nuclear User Facilities II scheme to provide more research facilities for nuclear researchers in the UK. The principal aim of this laboratory is to enable Diamond's users to handle active materials on site, either in the short term or performing longer term experiments. All beamline samples will be contained before studying them on one of Diamond's beamlines. Before the laboratory was built nearly all radioactive samples had to be brought to site in the containment in which they were going to be measured on the beamlines. This, in particular, made doing experiments in which the sample was heated or exposed to gases on a beamline very hard as the whole cell had to be transported intact. The areas of research that will benefit from the laboratory include materials for new nuclear fission, long-term storage of nuclear materials, a geological disposal facility for medium and high activity waste, how radionuclides behave in the environment and materials for nuclear fusion. The building was constructed over the period October 2020 – July 2021, before a fit out that was extended due to various Covid-related supply issues. The lab is now complete. It consists of two working labs, one nominally a wet laboratory and the other a dry one. They house two glove boxes, a high temperature furnace, an anaerobic Coy chamber, microscopes, centrifuges and other standard lab equipment. Furthermore, there is a counting room with a Gamma spectrometer and liquid scintillation counter. The Laboratory building also houses a storage room for storing active materials in a safe and secure manner. In 2022 the lab welcomed its first users, the group of Susannah Speller from Oxford. They are studying the effects of irradiation on high temperature superconductors, that may be used in fusion reactors. Several other groups have used the lab since then and Robin Ibbotson, Chief Technology Officer of Sellafield Ltd formally opened the laboratory in November 2022. InFUSE: INterface with the Future – Underpinning Science to support the Energy transition The InFUSE collaboration is a large-scale Prosperity Partnership funded by the EPSRC and SHELL. There are three partners; Imperial College London, SHELL and Diamond Light Source with multiple departments involved across many sites. The aim is to understand and overcome some of the fundamental problems that are hampering the efforts to achieve Net-Zero. Addressing Climate Change on the timescales required needs a rapid translation of technology through close partnership between academia and industry, with a shared vision and commitment. In this project, the team have identified how important the processes occurring at solid-fluid interfaces are in determining the properties of the system. The influence reveals itself in many relevant science areas such as carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), electrochemistry (for example at interfaces in battery materials), catalysis and lubricants amongst many others. It is clear that the interface morphology, phase and chemistry all play a role as to how the interface influences the properties. A complete picture can only be formulated by studying the problem on many fronts, adapting a correlative multi-technique approach, as shown in the Figure. Diamond Light Source contributes to this effort in a number of ways; three of the science groups from the physical science division are actively involved – structures and surfaces, spectroscopy and imaging. Three post-doctoral researchers based at Diamond complement those based in the research groups at Imperial College London. They aim to develop new sample environments that can move between beamlines to simplify such correlative studies, especially in ensuring that operando environments expose the sample to the same conditions on the different instruments. Such combined experiments also open up studies at different length scales or processes occurring at differing timescales. Importantly, the InFUSE team is also concentrating on developing modelling and analysis tools, such that interpreting the data from the different techniques will identify the important correlative behaviour. The sample environments and analysis methodology developed as part of InFUSE will be made available to all Diamond users; at present this includes small cells for catalysis studies at relevant pressures together with improved electrochemistry cells. The InFUSE team is committed to using the techniques at Diamond to optimise the interfaces to deliver improved performance. If you would like further details of the project please contact any of the relevant science group leaders at Diamond, Chris Nicklin, Paul Quinn or Sofia Diaz- Moreno. The InFUSE methodology combines multimodal characterisation with computational modelling for materials design. Robin Ibbotson, Chief Technology Officer of Sellafield Ltd, and Adrian Mancuso, Diamond Physical Sciences director in the Active Materials Building.