Tag Archives: Diamond Light Source

Project M: over1000 scientists, 110 schools, 800 samples, and U.K.’s synchrotron

A January 29, 2024 Diamond Light Source (UK synchrotron) press release (also on EurekAlert) announced results from a major school citizen science project,

Results of a large-scale innovative Citizen Science experiment called Project M which involved over 1000 scientists, 800 samples and 110 UK secondary schools in a huge experiment will be published in the prestigious RSC (Royal Society of Chemistry) journal CrystEngComm on 29 January 2024. The paper is titled: “Project M: Investigating the effect of additives on calcium carbonate crystallisation through a school citizen science program”. The paper shares a giant set of results from the school citizen scientists who collaborated with a team at Diamond to find out how different additives affect the different forms of calcium carbonate produced. These additives affect the type of calcium carbonate that forms, and thus its properties and potential applications. Being able to easily produce different forms of calcium carbonate could be very important for manufacturing.

Lead authors Claire Murray, Visiting Scientist at Diamond and Julia Parker, Diamond Principal Beamline Scientist and expert in calcium carbonate science who conceptualised the project, analysed the data, wrote and edited the manuscript explain that despite nature’s ability to precisely control calcium carbonate formation in shells and skeletons, laboratories around the world are often unable to exact the same level of control over how calcium carbonate forms. Nature uses molecules like amino acids and proteins to direct the formation of calcium carbonate, so we were interested in discovering how some of these molecules affect the calcium carbonate that we make in the lab.

Project M engaged the students and teachers as scientists, making different samples of calcium carbonate under varying conditions with different additives. 800 of these samples were then analysed in just 24 hours in April 2017 using the X-ray powder diffraction technique at on beamline I11 at Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron. This created a giant set of results which form the basis of the publication. A systematic study of this scale has never been completed anywhere else in the world.

The goal of this project was to find out how using different additives like amino acids affect the structure of the calcium carbonate. The mineral has three main forms called ‘polymorphs’ – vaterite, calcite and aragonite – which can be identified using X-ray powder diffraction at Diamond’s beamline l11. Diamond Light Source produces one of the brightest X-ray beams on planet Earth, which allow scientists to understand the atomic structure of materials. Scientists come from all over the UK and further afield to use these X-rays – as well as infrared and ultraviolet light – to make better drugs, understand the natural world, and create futuristic materials. Understanding the impact of different additives on the production of polymorphs is of huge interest in industry such as in manufacturing, medical applications such as tissue engineering and the design of drug-delivery systems, and even cosmetics.

However, mapping such a large parameter space, in terms of additive and concentration, requires the synthesis of a large number of samples and the provision of high throughput analysis techniques. It presented an exciting opportunity to collaborate with 110 secondary schools making real samples to showcase the high-throughput capability of the beamline, including rapid robotic changing of samples, which means diffraction patterns can be collected and samples changed in less than 90 seconds.

“The project was led by a scientific question we had,” explained Claire Murray. “The idea to involve school students and teaching staff in the preparation of the samples followed naturally as we know Chemistry projects are underrepresented in the citizen science space. The contribution that student citizen scientists can make to research should not be underestimated. These projects can provide a powerful way for researchers to access volumes of data they might struggle to collect otherwise, as well as inspiring future generations of scientists.”

The project was designed with kit and resources to support the schools to learn new techniques and knowledge and to provide them with space to interact and engage with the experiment. After analysis at Diamond, the students had the opportunity to look at their results, see their peaks and determine what sort of polymorphs they had produced, and compare their results with the results obtained by different samples and different schools at different locations in the UK.

Gry E. Christensen, former student and Project M Scientist at Didcot Girls’ School, Didcot commented; “It was an amazing journey and I recommend that if any other schools have a chance to help with a similar project, then jump on board, because it is a once in a lifetime opportunity for the students, and you feel you can make a positive change to the world.”

“The fact that we didn’t know the answer yet was a motivational factor for the students,” explains Claire Murray. “The teachers told us they took everything more seriously, because this was real science in action – it really meant something. They shared how the students were excited to translate their lab skills to this experiment and that the students were able to contextualise their learning from their prescribed textbooks and lab classes. Teachers also highlighted their own interest and curiosity as many of them have trained as chemists in their education. They appreciated the connection to real science for themselves and the opportunity for continued professional development.”

‘The project offered our pupils a unique opportunity to take part in genuine scientific research and should act as a blueprint for future projects that aim to engage young people in science beyond the classroom.’ Adds Matthew Wainwright, teacher and Project M Scientist at Kettlethorpe High School, Wakefield.

Exploring the role of amino acids in directing crystallisation with the Project M Scientists was an opportunity and an honour for the authors. Julia Parker explained; “In our work we see how we can draw novel scientific conclusions regarding the effect of amino acids on the structure of calcite and vaterite calcium carbonate polymorphs. This ability to explore a wide parameter space in sample conditions, whilst providing continued educational and scientific engagement benefits for the students and teachers involved, can we hope in future be applied to other materials synthesis investigations.”

Project M enabled schools to carry out real research and do an experiment that had never been done before, in their own school laboratory. It was the first ‘citizen science’ project run by Diamond, which transported Diamond science to schools and enabled the production of a considerable set of results, which has now resulted in this successful publication in CrystEngComm.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper, Note: the Project M Scientists are listed as authors,

Project M: investigating the effect of additives on calcium carbonate crystallisation through a school citizen science program by Claire A. Murray, Project M Scientists, Laura Holland, Rebecca O’Brien, Alice Richards, Annabelle R. Baker, Mark Basham, David Bond, Leigh D. Connor, Sarah J. Day, Jacob Filik, Stuart Fisher, Peter Holloway, Karl Levik, Ronaldo Mercado, Jonathan Potter, Chiu C. Tang, Stephen P. Thompson, and Julia E. Parker. CrystEngComm, 2024,26, 753-763 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/D3CE01173A First published: 29 Jan 2024

This paper is open access.

New nanoparticle beam technology

It’s been quite a while since there’s been an equipment announcement here and, happily, this equipment will help with climate change, and more according to scientists from Swansea University (UK).

A June 29, 2021 Swansea University press release (also on EurekAlert but published on July 2, 2021) announces the new nanoparticle beam instrument,

A new state-of-the-art instrument has been built by a team from Swansea University’s Nanomaterials Laboratory which will help scientists fight against climate change, microbial infection and other major global challenges.

The team invented and built the nanoparticle beam instrument with the help of scientists from Freiburg University, Germany and have now installed it at the UK’s national synchrotron science facility, Diamond Light Source, based at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.

In an initial four-year contract, the instrument will be available for use by staff and users of the Diamond synchrotron and a new Swansea University satellite laboratory team based at the Diamond facility, seconded from the University’s Nanomaterials Laboratory in Engineering led by Professor Richard Palmer. The Laboratory is a world leader in inventing revolutionary nanoparticle beam technology.

The new Swansea instrument located at Diamond’s versatile soft X-ray (VerSoX) beamline B07 will enable the precise generation of nanoscale particles of diverse materials by the method of gas-phase condensation, their size-selection with a mass spectrometer and then deposition onto surfaces to make prototype devices. It will help scientists explore and optimise the influence of particle size, structure and composition on properties relevant to applications as varied as catalysis, batteries, and antibacterial coatings for medical implants. It has the potential to aid radical discovery and innovation in both energy and medical technologies. Initial focus will be on the generation of green hydrogen and green ammonia as clean fuels. This can positively contribute to tackling climate change by harnessing renewable but intermittent energy sources – such as wind, tidal and solar – and storing the energy in these molecules.

The nanoparticle source at Diamond will complement the Matrix Assembly Cluster Source (MACS) and two more new instruments developed by the group at Swansea University. The instrument at Diamond is an ultra-precision source of size-selected nanoparticles (also termed clusters) designed for materials discovery and optimisation, while the MACS is designed to scale-up discoveries made at this model scale to the level of manufacturing.

Professor Steve Wilks, Provost of Swansea University, said: “The installation of this new nanoparticle instrument heralds the start of a strategic partnership between Swansea University and Diamond Light Source, and is underpinned by the Welsh Government. It opens up new opportunities for the Diamond staff and user community to work alongside our Swansea University satellite team based at Diamond, as conceived by Professor Palmer. In particular, nanoparticles have tremendous potential as new catalysts for sustainable energy generation, such as the splitting of water by sunlight to make clean hydrogen fuel, and for the synthesis of medicines and sensors.”

Professor Laurent Chapon, Diamond’s Physical Sciences Director, commented: “Diamond always wants to offer state -of-the-art instruments – often unique in the world – to the user community. One of the ways we push our technology is by partnering with key universities to help us drive forward the balance of scientific vision and needs from the community. Our collaboration with Swansea University provides a unique experimental (nanoparticle beam) set-up for materials discovery, that supports our surface, interface and catalysis community in addressing the pressing challenges of global health and climate. We all now look forward to the advancement in knowledge this new capability will bring.”

The Welsh Government Office for Science Sêr Cymru Programme is supporting the secondment of Dr Yubiao Niu from the Swansea team to Diamond via a Sêr Cymru Industrial Fellowship. He will commission the new instrument and explore the use of nanoparticle catalysts for low energy synthesis of ammonia and storage of hydrogen, with Imperial College also collaborating.

Professor Peter Halligan, WG’s Chief Science Advisor, said: “Generating a hydrogen-based fuel such as ammonia promises to overcome several of the technical challenges faced by hydrogen but has its own challenges. The metallic cluster catalyst method is innovative technology and one which deserves to be explored and exploited to its full potential. Dr Yubiao Niu, Swansea University, Diamond Light Source and Imperial College should be applauded for their foresight and ambition in this exciting area of research.”

in case you’re curious,

Caption: Professor Richard Palmer and Dr. Yubiao Niu from Swansea University with the new nanoparticle instrument at Diamond Light Source.. Credit: Henry Hoddinott.

Shades of 1939! Advance in x-ray imaging of nanomaterials

The technique was first suggested in 1939 but wasn’t feasible until the advent of computers and their algorithms. Researchers at the University College of London have found a way to improve the quality of 3-D images of nanomaterials. From the Aug. 7, 2012 news release on EurekAlert,

A new advance in X-ray imaging has revealed the dramatic three-dimensional shape of gold nanocrystals, and is likely to shine a light on the structure of other nano-scale materials.

Described today in Nature Communications, the new technique improves the quality of nanomaterial images, made using X-ray diffraction, by accurately correcting distortions in the X-ray light.

Dr Jesse Clark, lead author of the study from the London Centre for Nanotechnology [at the University College of London] said: “With nanomaterials playing an increasingly important role in many applications, there is a real need to be able to obtain very high quality three dimensional images of these samples.

“Up until now we have been limited by the quality of our X-rays. Here we have demonstrated that with imperfect X-ray sources we can still obtain very high quality images of nanomaterials.”

You can see the differences for yourself in this image provided by the researchers,

Figure: Shown on the left is the three dimensional image of a gold nanocrystal obtained previously while on the right is the image using the newly developed method. The features of the nanocrystal are vastly improved in the image on the left. The black scale bar is 100 nanometres (1 nanometre = 1 billionth of a meter). Downloaded from http://www.london-nano.com/research-and-facilities/highlight/advance-in-x-ray-imaging-shines-light-on-nanomaterials

The researchers have also provided two videos, the first features the current standard 3-D image of a gold nanocrystal and the second features the improved image,

Standard 3-D

Improved 3-D

The Aug. 7, 2012 news release originated from an article (Aug. 2012?) by Ian Robinson and Jesse Clark for the London Centre for Nanotechnology (part of the University College of London) giving context for the research and describing the technique (Note: I have removed a link),

Up until now, most nanomaterial imaging has been done using electron microscopy. X-ray imaging is an attractive alternative as X-rays penetrate further into the material than electrons and can be used in ambient or controlled environments.

However, making lenses that focus X-rays is very difficult. As an alternative, scientists use the indirect method of coherent diffraction imaging (CDI), where the diffraction pattern of the sample is measured (without lenses) and inverted to an image by computer.

Nobel Prize winner Lawrence Bragg suggested this method in 1939 but had no way to determine the missing phases of the diffraction, which are today provided by computer algorithms.

CDI can be performed very well at the latest synchrotron X-ray sources such as the UK’s Diamond Light Source which have much higher coherent flux than earlier machines.  CDI is gaining momentum in the study of nanomaterials, but, until now, has suffered from poor synchimage quality, with broken or non-uniform density.  This had been attributed to imperfect coherence of the X-ray light used.

The dramatic three-dimensional images of gold nanocrystals presented in this study demonstrate that this distortion can be corrected by appropriate modelling of the coherence function.

Professor Ian Robinson, London Centre for Nanotechnology and author of the paper said: “The corrected images are far more interpretable that ever obtained previously and will likely lead to new understanding of structure of nanoscale materials.”

The method should also work for free-electron-laser, electron- and atom-based diffractive imaging.

That mention of the UK’s Diamond Light Source reminded me of the Canadian Light Source located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I imagine this work will open up some possibilities for the researchers there.

For those who would like to read more about the work, here’s a citation for the article,

High resolution three dimensional partially coherent diffraction imaging, Nature Communications.  J.N. Clark, X. Huang, R. Harder, & I.K. Robinson Nature Communications 3, Article number: 993 doi:10.1038/ncomms1994

This article is behind a paywall.

Canadian Light Source and Diamond Light (UK) Synchrotrons

Two synchrotrons, Canadian Light Source (CLS [Saskatoon, Saskatchewan]) and Diamond Light Source (near Oxford, England) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU). From the May 31, 2011 news item on physorg.com,

Making the power of synchrotron light available to more businesses, building new experimental equipment and developing new capabilities are three of the areas of collaboration in a trans-Atlantic memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed between Diamond Light Source Ltd. near Oxford and Canadian Light Source Inc. (CLS) in Saskatoon.

The agreement paves the way for the two synchrotron light sources to work together on joint projects related to their industrial science programmes, such as exchanges of staff, marketing materials, and coordinating access for clients to capabilities that are available at one synchrotron but not the other.

“Diamond and the CLS have been working closely together for some time,” said Josef Hormes, Executive Director of the CLS. “Now that we have this formal agreement, I am looking forward to a very bright future where the expertise of both our facilities can be combined to accomplish momentous things for fundamental and industrial science.

They don’t mention nanotechnology but synchrotrons can be used for subnanometre measurement and nanofabrication (National Light Source Synchrotron 2009 seminar with Dr. Lin Wang).  You can find out more about synchrotrons at the CLS Education webpage,

A synchrotron is a source of brilliant light that scientists can use to gather information about the structural and chemical properties of materials at the molecular level.

A synchrotron produces the light by using powerful electro-magnets and radio frequency waves to accelerate electrons to nearly the speed of light. Energy is added to the electrons as they accelerate so that, when the magnets alter their course, they naturally emit a very brilliant, highly focused light. Different spectra of light, such as Infrared, Ultraviolet, and X-rays, are directed down beamlines where researchers choose the desired wavelength to study their samples. The researchers observe the interaction between the light and the matter in their sample at the endstations (small laboratories).

This tool can be used to probe the matter and analyze a host of physical, chemical, geological, and biological processes. Information obtained by scientists can be used to help design new drugs, examine the structure of surfaces to develop more effective motor oils, build smaller, more powerful computer chips, develop new materials for safer medical implants, and help with clean-up of mining wastes, to name just a few applications.

Quick Facts:

  • More than 40 synchrotron light sources have been built around the world. The Canadian synchrotron is competitive with the brightest facilities in Japan, the U.S. and Europe.
  • As of 2009, more than 2000 scientists have used the CLS.
  • More than 3,000 academic, industrial, and government researchers a year from across Canada and from other countries are expected to use the facility once the full complement of beamlines is developed. Beamlines carry the synchrotron light to scientific work stations capable of operating 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, approximately 42 weeks of the year.
  • Initially, the CLS will focus on research in three key areas:
    • mining, natural resources and the environment
    • advanced materials, information technologies and micro systems
    • biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and medicine
  • The first synchrotrons were additions to facilities built to study subatomic physics. Synchrotron light was an annoyance to the researchers because it meant their electron beams lost energy every time they went through a bending magnet. However, the remarkable qualities of this light were soon recognized, and researchers began to come up with ways to use it.

Currently, CLSI has more than 130 employees. The work force of scientists, engineers, technicians, and administrators is growing to match additional CLSI users. Located in the midst of a research cluster on the north end of the University of Saskatchewan, next to Innovation Place, one of Canada’s leading high-tech industrial parks, CLSI strengthens Saskatoon’s reputation as “Science City” as a much-needed national R&D facility.

Intriguingly, they don’t mention the word radiation until the 2nd to last section, Salute to safety. In fact, it wasn’t easy finding the Education webpage; it’s not accessible from the Home page as it’s rendered on my computer screen. (I found it by using a search engine.)