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Newsletter=========================================================== CLS-News Vol. 2 No. 1 April 9, 2003 www.lightsource.ca University of Saskatchewan, Canada ====================================================================
*************************************************************************** 1. Applications to the CFI for the next set of CLS Beamlines (Contact: mike.bancroft@lightsource.ca) As most of you are aware, seven beamlines (so-called Phase I beamlines) are currently being constructed at the CLS. In a truly national effort these beamlines (and the entire CLS facility) were funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) in 1999 (40% of total funds), along with Western Economic Diversification, Natural Resources Canada, National Research Council, the Canadian Institute of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Saskatchewan Industry and Resources, the City of Saskatoon, SaskPower, the Ontario Innovation Trust, Alberta Innovation and Science, Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Western Ontario, the University of Alberta, and Boehringer Ingelheim. In the last three years, many other beamline and end-station proposals have been developed by the Canadian scientific community, and these proposals have been reviewed extensively by the Facility Advisory Committee and an ad-hoc CLS Board committee. Seven beamline proposals and two end-station proposals are currently being prepared for the CFI, and they will be submitted by the May 30, 2003 CFI deadline. Since the CLS was funded as a National Facility by the CFI, all these proposals will also be considered as National proposals. The proposals are coming from four different Universities in three different provinces, and they are being coordinated by the CLS. The proposals (lead University and Project leader) are: 1) Canadian Centre for Advanced X-ray Diffraction Studies (U. Sask., De-Tong Jiang), 2) Biomedical Beamline (U. Sask., Gregg Adams), 3) Canadian Synchrotron Nanostructures Facility (U. Sask., David Klymyshyn), 4) Resonant Elastic and Inelastic X-ray Scattering (UBC, George Sawatzky), 5) Canadian Macromolecular Crystallography #2 (UBC, Natalie Strynadka), 6) Soft X-ray Beamline for Microcharacterization of Materials, (UWO, T.K. Sham), 7) VESPERS (UWO, Stewart McIntyre), 8) XPS Endstation (UWO, Mike Bancroft), and 9) Powder Diffraction Endstation (University of Ottawa, Serge Desgreniers). These proposals require a tremendous amount of effort from a lot of dedicated scientists, and I would especially like to thank the Project leaders and their teams, and Emil Hallin, Beryl Lepage and Betty Harper at the CLS for all their effort. Please contact Emil Hallin or Mike Bancroft for more information on these proposals. *************************************************************************** 2. Bill's Bulletin: Revision of CLS Committees' Structure (Contact: bill.thomlinson@lightsource.ca) I'm pleased to announce the CLS is changing the structure of its advisory committees. All existing functions will be maintained and new responsibilities added as we move into the operational phase of CLS. We believe that the changes will better serve the user community, the CLS, and our funding councils. Significant changes are the move to a Science Advisory Committee (SAC) that will absorb the functions of the present Facility Advisory Committee (FAC) and Review Oversight Committee (ROC), the change from the Beamline Planning Advisory Committee (BPAC) to the Beamline Advisory Committee (BAC) to reflect the end of the initial planning stage, and the introduction of the concept of the weekly user meeting at the CLS. The SAC will have membership from the national and international scientific communities, as well as representation by the Users' Advisory Committee (UAC). It will also be responsible for the establishment and oversight of the necessary committees for peer review of experiments and scientific programs of the beamteams, and for the overall review of beamteam performance. These reviews are required by the CLS Board of Directors and by the funding councils responsible for the CLS. The peer review committees will be organized by the CLS Research Director and the User Services Office. Overall review of the performance of the CLS and the scientific productivity will be the purview of the SAC. The BAC will, for the time being, maintain the present structure, function and composition of the BPAC. However, as additional resources are developed at the CLS, its membership will expand. The first meeting of the BAC will be held in the near future and a schedule for future meetings will be developed. The following details the scheduled changes: *************************************************************************** 3. Storage Ring progress (Contact: dan.lowe@lightsource.ca) Five vacuum chambers have been assembled and installed and a sixth chamber is now ready for installation. All magnets required for Storage Ring commissioning have been received, with the exception of four kicker magnets. All the sextupole and quadrupole magnets are now installed. Dipole and orbit corrector magnet installation has begun. Magnet power supplies are all on site with the exception of one, which is expected on site in early May. Delivery of the super-conducting cavity is expected at the end of April. The cryogenic plant is commissioned and will be ready for the super-conducting cavity when installed. The RF amplifier system has gone through commissioning and the design of the low level RF control is progressing and will be ready for integration with the cavity and RF amplifier system. The installation of mechanical and electrical services is progressing and both are expected to be complete by mid-summer. *************************************************************************** 4. Health, Safety and Environment Department News (Contact: mohamed.benmerrouche@lightsource.ca) On January 30th, 2003, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) approved the amendment to the CLS operating license. The amended license is valid until May/27/2006 and authorizes us to begin the third and final phase of beam commissioning (storage ring, BTS and beamlines). Following completion of the commissioning activities, CLSI will seek CNSC approval to begin normal operations in a future public hearing of the commission. As part of its safety mandate HSE has also implemented new access procedures that include a new visitor badges process and restructuring of HSE courses to more effectively train CLS staff and visitors. Lastly, the Facility Annual Compliance Report, required by the CLS operating license, was completed and submitted to the CNSC and the University of Saskatchewan on March 27th. *************************************************************************** 5. Notes from the UAC: Next Users Meeting is November 14-16 - Suggestions Welcome (Contact: Tom Tiedje tiedje@physics.ubc.ca) The Users Advisory Committee is beginning planning for the upcoming annual users meeting on November 14-16, 2003, in Saskatoon. If you have suggestions for topics for workshops at this meeting or talks please send them to Tom Tiedje, UAC Chair, tiedje@physics.ubc.ca, before May 1. In other UAC news, Michele Loewen has agreed to serve as the on-site representative of the UAC to the CLS. Michele is a research officer with the NRC-Plant Biotechnology Institute in Saskatoon. Her research is in the field of protein structural biology including X-ray crystallography. ==================================================================== 6. Science Highlights: Properties of Non-equivalent Sites and Band Gap of c-Si3N4 using Soft X-ray Spectroscopy (Contact: moewes@usask.ca) Cubic silicon nitride (c-Si3N4) is the third synthesized phase of silicon nitride. It is a spinel structure containing Si in both tetrahedral and octahedral cation sites. The octahedral arrangement of nitrogen anions is unique to this material. Although this structure is present in many oxide ceramics, nitride cations have never been observed in this six-fold bonding arrangement. Soft x-ray spectroscopy has been used to probe the electronic properties of this material. X-ray absorption and emission spectra are produced by the excitation and relaxation of core-state electrons in a material. X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) provides a direct probe of the element-specific localized partial density of states (LPDOS) for unoccupied states near the Fermi level. Conversely, x-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) probes the LPDOS of occupied states. By combining these two methods, many properties associated with the DOS of the material can be predicted. Using XES and XAS, the band-gap for c-Si3N4 has been determined to be 3.70±0.25eV. No experimental results from other sources have been published, but the above measured value agrees with published theoretical results. Additionally, by selecting appropriate excitation energies, electrons can be excited resonantly from the octahedral or tetrahedral sites specifically. When site-selective excitation is utilized, the corresponding emission spectrum provides LPDOS due primarily to that site. This method provides structural information that was heretofore unattainable for c-Si3N4. Our research has validated this technique and confirmed LPDOS calculations. S. Leitch1, A. Moewes1, W.-Y. Ching2 1University of Saskatchewan, 2University of Missouri-Kansas City ==================================================================== 7. User Services Administrator- starting May 1st (Contact: bill.thomlinson@lightsource.ca) We are pleased to announce that effective May 1, 2003 Lavina Carter will occupy the newly created position of User Services Administrator. This important milestone will ensure that the CLS develops and implements a User Services Office that is responsive to the needs of its users. Her previous positions in the Director's office as well as Finance and Administration, have equipped Lavina with knowledge of a wide range of areas within the facility. This will be a definite asset in coordinating efforts with all CLS departments to better serve users. Lavina will report formally to the Director of Research (TBA). On a related note we'd like to thank Sandra Ribeiro, formerly User Liaison, for her hard work and commitment to user relations over the last 2 years. Sandra will remain in the Business Development sector to now focus on the development of industrial user relationships and overall facility public relations and marketing. ==================================================================== 8. Summer students positions (Contact: jobs@lightsource.ca) We have several positions open at present: ==================================================================== CLS E-News is an electronic newsletter designed to keep users informed about developments at the Canadian Light Source, the national synchrotron user facility located at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK. Current and past issues of CLS E-News are available on the CLS web site: http://www.lightsource.ca/enews/archives.php To unsubscribe please go to http://www.lightsource.ca/enews/signup.php. We welcome suggestions for topics and content. =========================================================== Last modified: 2008-07-29 14:07:29 |
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