Speaker
Description
Since 2013 CLAESS offered access to x-ray absorption and x-ray emission spectroscopy to a wide user community, running in a regime of around 50 experiments per year, most of them addressing key social challenges. The main focus on catalysis, energy related materials, environmental science, and solid-state physics resulted in the development of dedicated setups, optimized experimental strategies, and staff member scientific experience in the respective fields.
The gained experience, together with some users’ necessities allow to identify, in the incoming ALBA II upgrade, interesting opportunities. Indeed, in the framework of the machine upgrade an upgraded CLAESS beamline could significantly expand its capabilities by providing nearly simultaneous access to μXRF, μXAS, and μXES with micrometer spatial resolution and ~1 s full-scan acquisition times.
The proposed upgrade includes new optics, a faster monochromator and sample stage, together with enhanced standard fluorescence detection and highly efficient X-ray emission spectrometers. These improvements will enable high-throughput operando and in-situ experiments with 100-fold better time resolution while minimizing radiation damage. Moreover, both environmental science and solid-state physics will profit of the higher space resolution allowing experiments which are currently requesting access to other facilities. Finally, enhanced detection limits will further extend applications to diluted systems.
The upgraded CLAESS beamline is expected to strongly support ALBA II’s key pillars — multi-modal and multi-scale programs, high-throughput techniques, and operando/in-situ studies — with direct impact on research in renewable energy, green catalysis, batteries, environmental science, and food security, and will enhance ALBA’s competitiveness for studies of heterogeneous and dynamic systems under realistic working conditions.