Principal investigator, Mark Schlossman of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and co-principal investigators, PME Pritzker Director Matthew Tirrell and Executive Director of CARS Mark Rivers, were recently awarded a Major Research Instrumentation award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
This Major Research Instrumentation award to the University of Illinois at Chicago supports the acquisition and implementation of a state-of-the-art cadmium telluride (CdTe) pixel array area detector for advanced x-ray synchrotron applications in the areas of chemical, materials, and earth sciences. The instruments will support research at ChemMatCARS and GeoSoilEnviroCARS (GSECARS) at the Advanced Photon Source (Argonne National Laboratory). ChemMatCARS and GSECARS are national user facilities with a broad impact on the nation's research and educational infrastructure and serve about 1,400 users annually. Studies of materials using this detector will provide the foundation for our scientific understanding of materials at the atomic level. This detector is particularly well suited to the high energy x-ray source at the Advanced Photon Source. Over half of these researchers are students, who are trained in state-of-the-art x-ray techniques. ChemMatCARS and GSECARS conduct workshops and other training, including a focus on training and outreach for women and under-represented minority students. Training the next generation of scientists in the use of the proposed state-of-the-art detector keeps our scientific community up to date and provides them with the experimental tools needed to best address the challenging problems in their research. In addition to Major Research Instrumentation funds from the Division of Materials Research and the Division of Earth Sciences, this award is supported using funds from the Chemistry Division and the Office of Multidisciplinary Activities in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate.
X-ray detectors are used to record the interaction of x-rays with materials, thus yielding the atomic-level structure of the material. The capabilities of the new detector, the Pilatus3 X CdTe 1M, which include its large active area, high efficiency at high energies, speed, large dynamic range, and low-noise photon counting, will transform crystallography and other measurements at ChemMatCARS and GSECARS. Within ChemMatCARS, the detector will be used primarily by the advanced crystallography station in research areas that include solar energy conversion, photo-excitation, catalysis, hard inorganic materials, metal-metal bonded complexes, and processes within metal organic frameworks. Within GSECARS, the new detector will be used in research to advance knowledge of the composition, structure, and properties of earth materials, the processes that produce them, and the processes they control. The unique capabilities of GSECARS will continue to allow groundbreaking experiments to be conducted in research areas that include high-pressure and high-temperature mineral physics in the diamond anvil cell and multi-anvil press, non-crystalline and nano-crystalline materials at high pressure and high temperature, including studies of liquids at conditions that simulate the Earth's deep mantle, and mineral-water interface reactions.
Story courtesy of the National Science Foundation.