From the Director
Looking forward, we send our best greetings for 2021. The DOE and SLAC management have been very supportive of SSRL and the user program through the pandemic. We appreciate your patience and support as we continue to work through and adjust as the conditions evolve. SSRL beam line staff will continue to contact users to discuss beam time requests, determine which experiments can be performed within current COVID-19 constraints and coordinate sample handling. Although x-ray experiments are primarily being performed either by remote access or by beam line staff through mail-in samples, we are optimistic that we will be able to gradually re-introduce users to the SSRL experimental floor later this year beginning with local (Northern California) users.
– Paul McIntyre
Science Highlights
Reversible Multicolor Chromism in Layered Formamidinium Metal Halide Perovskites – Contacts: Bryan Rosales, NREL, and Laura E. Mundt, SLAC
Switchable photovoltaic windows hold much promise as a new technology to mitigate greenhouse gases that cause climate change. These windows not only automatically and reversibly darken to decrease the need for air conditioning, they generate electricity. One promising active layer is based on metal halide perovskites (MHP), a crystalline material that can harness sunlight. The thin film of MHP undergoes a phase change, causing a color change, in reaction to a molecular trigger present in a vapor around the material. A team of scientists is optimizing window materials that use perovskites that darken to a variety of colors when heated and engaging water as the trigger molecule. Read more...
Evidence for a Dynamic Mo-nitrogenase Metallocofactor during Dinitrogen Reduction – Contact: Markus W. Ribbe, UC Irvine
Nitrogen is an essential component for life and often a limiting factor for growth, despite the fact that air is composed of mostly nitrogen. The processing required to turn dinitrogen (N2) gas into a form usable by most living organisms is rare in nature. Breaking the triple bond of N2 requires the enzyme nitrogenase, which is found in some bacteria. The mechanism of nitrogenase, which uses metal ion containing cofactors to catalyze this energetically difficult reaction, is complex and difficult to decipher. A team of researchers has applied a new method to peek at the mechanism of the reaction by looking at the enzyme bound to its metal ion cofactors in an intermediate state. Read more...
Awards
2020 E.O. Lawrence Awards Recognize SSRL Users
Yi Cui, a pioneer in clean energy technology at Stanford and SLAC, is one of eight scientists and engineers honored by the U.S. Department of Energy Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award, which honors mid-career scientists and engineers in eight research fields.
Cui is recognized in Energy Science and Innovation: For exceptional contributions in nanomaterials design, synthesis and characterization for energy and the environment, particularly for transformational innovations in battery science and technology. Read more...
M. Zahid Hasan, Princeton’s Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics, SSRL user and former student of Zhi-Xun Shen, Stanford University, says about one-third of his work that led to this award was done here at SSRL. Zahid is recognized in Condensed Matter and Materials Sciences: For groundbreaking discoveries using spin-angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, which elucidated the topological nature and electronic structure of topological insulators, topological phase transitions, and topological semimetals (Weyl fermions), revealing them as new phases of quantum matter. Read more...
Announcements
Call for User Publications and Reminder to Acknowledge SSRL and Funding Agencies
Publications are an important metric of productivity. SSRL provides technical tools for user experiments with the requirement that scientists will report and properly acknowledge use of our facility and funding agencies in resulting publications. Acknowledgement templates are provided on our website.
Please note that with the successful renewal of the SSRL Structural Molecular Biology Program, the NIH grant number to include has changed to P30GM133894.
To help us keep an up-to-date publications list please take a few minutes to use our publications database search and submit form to see if your most recent SSRL-related publications are included and add any that are missing.
